R&G Act 2

Rosencrantz randomly brings up the idea of death and how it is like lying in a box. He plays with the irony of being dead but having the ability to know you are dead and in a box. Death is a heavy thing to deal with especially if you believe that death is the ceasing of existence. We don't know what it is like to not exist, having no thoughts, no feeling, nothing around us but the box. This is why Stoppard talks about death in a humorous way. It's too hard to contemplate being in utter nothingness for eternity. It would be much better to know that you were in something, even a box, with the hope of entering into something more meaningful than to have no awareness of anything. Fortunately, as a Christian I don't have to try so hard to wrap my understanding around the concept of not existing because I know that death is just the beginning of a greater existence.