night by ellie wiesel chapter 3

The cattle car actually takes place in chapter 2. In this section of the novel, we catch our first glimpse of how human behavior changes when people are placed in extreme circumstances. After being confined in a small, cramped wagon with no food, water, or sanitation, the young people submit to their animal instincts and copulate without even considering the people around them. If people are not respected as individuals within society and are instead treated as animals, as the Jews are, then they will begin to act as animals, without regard to the usual social conventions and responsibilities. In addition to the physical torture and extermination that the Nazis submitted the Jews to, it is this kind of mental and psychological torture that may have proved most damaging to Holocaust survivors.