I suspect that the old man and X, like many people, are more afraid of death than they are in love with life, and that an animalistic fear overrides whatever rational intelligence they possess; I would guess that they fear the unknown of what Shakespeare called the “undiscovered country,” the probable nothingness they believe lies beyond this life despite their wavering belief in God; they fear having the fire of their existence extinguished as if they had never been; they fear being small and irrelevant and forgotten.
