Answer:
"relentlessly severe, stern, or gloomy in manner or appearance."
Explanation:
Lyddie doesn't sign the petition, because she is afraid of the consequences of that action. By signing the petition, she would publicly be associating with it and those workers. She runs the risk of being fired from her current job and blacklisted from the other mills. Lyddie cannot let that happen. She desperately needs the paycheck in order to pay back the debt that her family owes.
Wiesel is a Jew during the holocaust who is sent with his father to multiple concentration camps. He faces a lot of challenges to the point where he questions his life everyday. Throughout Night, there is a great deal of dehumanization taking place in the form of starvation, brutality, and forced labor.
When PI says that quote, he means that the human race perceive themselves as superior at everything. He also uses the technique of anthropomorphism ( to give human traits to animals) to imply that we look past all the idiosyncratic qualities of animals and we decide to give animals the traits of us, the humans.
I don't know if it's good or not, but I hope this helps
