This uniform appearance is a bizarre inversion of the concept of equality. The inmates are really equal - all of them have an equal chance of dying or surviving, ending up in the chimney or persevering somehow until the day came. They are equally miserable and are deemed equally unworthy of human existence, in the eyes of their masters. On a certain level, they feel relieved because it means that their lives depend on pure chance or coincidence, and not on their personal traits. On the other level, they feel destroyed because they are deprived of their identity, which is the main signifier of freedom, thinking, and humanness. They are no longer people, but numbers.
