Whitman chose a bird and Oliver chose the black snake. In literature, birds are used to represent freedom, something positive or a transition. “They represent the human desire to escape gravity, to reach the level of the angel. The bird is often the disembodied human soul, freed from its physical constraints” (Birds). Whitman uses the bird to represent the transition from the death of self to the birth of a poet. The boy is free to be a poet, which is what his soul was always destined to do. In literature, snakes are used to represent fertility, a creative life force, rebirth, transformation, immortality, healing, temptation, chaos, or something negative. In literature, the color black is used to represent evil, fear, death or something negative. Oliver used the black snake because most people are afraid of snakes; Most people would not want to stop their car to pick up a snake from the road and bring it to safety like they would with deer, cats or dogs. Oliver wanted the reader to realize that a person should always treat anything and everything with care, love and compassion, no matter what it is or who it is and no matter how good or considered it is. bad. Oliver wanted people to realize that all life is sacred. The second difference between Whitman's and Oliver's poems is how the characters had an epiphany around death. In Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, the boy does not initially have an epiphany surrounding death after the bird disappears and never returns; he finally has a revelation when the sea whispers something to him: “Not delaying, not hurrying, whispered to me all night, and very clearly before dawn, lisped to me the grave and delicious word of death » (Whitman 76). In The Black Snake, the narrator has a revelation surrounding death as the snake dies and leaves; they didn't need to have anything else to show or