Despite the drastic difference between the behavior of the Jews in the beginning and at the end of Wiesel’s memoir, they both share the commonality of hunger. At the start of Wiesel’s story, everyone was trying to help each other by rationing and preserving the food that was given, agreeing to reduce the amount they eat, so they are never completely full. However, by the end, the Jews were violently battling to the death for a piece of bread. Hunger is not a feeling that can be fully controlled or stopped, primarily because the hormone, ghrelin, is the reason humans feel hungry. Ghrelin activates neurons, which tell the brain that it needs food, causing the response of hunger. The longer the deprivation of food, the higher ghrelin levels become,
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If ingesting about half the calories of an average human can cause these horrific symptoms, then the audience cannot even fathom what mental effects were induced on the Jews when they did not consume any calories at all. Transforming from rational humans to brutal monsters, the state of hunger exhibits its severe effects to both the mental and physical conditions of a human. Ultimately, the experiment also relates to how the Jewish prisoners at the beginning resemble the rational people before extreme starvation occurred, having the behavior at the end of Wiesel’s memoir as the after effect. However, the result of starvation can also be physically seen with the first and second photos, where the Jews in the first one represent people before voracity became extreme and the Jew in the second image illustrates the outcome of severe starvation. Even though hunger does not seem like the most significant response within the human body, it can genuinely consume and tear apart any sense of morality when the deprivation of nourishment affects someone for a long …show more content…
The trauma from hunger during the Holocaust was so incredibly damaging that it has even continued to affect some Jewish survivors today. According to a study in 2004, Holocaust survivors have developed habits of storing an abundance of food, having difficulty throwing food away, and even having anxiety when food is not immediately accessible. Although this is not the case with every single Holocaust survivor, the fact that there are people who still developed these abnormal eating habits from their cruel experience with starvation only heightens the fact that food should be appreciated more by humans. In America, nearly 40% of its food is wasted per year, which is 133 billion pounds. People take food for granted and because of it, humans waste immense amount of food that could have potentially fed hundreds of other people. During the Holocaust, the Jewish prisoners perceived a second slice of bread as a luxury, but now, in modern society, people see bread as a conventional food item. Just because food is common, does not mean that it should not be appreciated any less than something expensive, like gold. Without nourishment from food, we, as humans can encounter
If ingesting about half the calories of an average human can cause these horrific symptoms, then the audience cannot even fathom what mental effects were induced on the Jews when they did not consume any calories at all. Transforming from rational humans to brutal monsters, the state of hunger exhibits its severe effects to both the mental and physical conditions of a human. Ultimately, the experiment also relates to how the Jewish prisoners at the beginning resemble the rational people before extreme starvation occurred, having the behavior at the end of Wiesel’s memoir as the after effect. However, the result of starvation can also be physically seen with the first and second photos, where the Jews in the first one represent people before voracity became extreme and the Jew in the second image illustrates the outcome of severe starvation. Even though hunger does not seem like the most significant response within the human body, it can genuinely consume and tear apart any sense of morality when the deprivation of nourishment affects someone for a long …show more content…
The trauma from hunger during the Holocaust was so incredibly damaging that it has even continued to affect some Jewish survivors today. According to a study in 2004, Holocaust survivors have developed habits of storing an abundance of food, having difficulty throwing food away, and even having anxiety when food is not immediately accessible. Although this is not the case with every single Holocaust survivor, the fact that there are people who still developed these abnormal eating habits from their cruel experience with starvation only heightens the fact that food should be appreciated more by humans. In America, nearly 40% of its food is wasted per year, which is 133 billion pounds. People take food for granted and because of it, humans waste immense amount of food that could have potentially fed hundreds of other people. During the Holocaust, the Jewish prisoners perceived a second slice of bread as a luxury, but now, in modern society, people see bread as a conventional food item. Just because food is common, does not mean that it should not be appreciated any less than something expensive, like gold. Without nourishment from food, we, as humans can encounter