Chapter 5 - Dignity

  A recurring theme I came across in chapter five was the concept of the loss of human dignity.  Vonnegut was sure to present the soldiers of not maintaining dignity while under pressure of real war, for not doing so would be to romanticize war - the opposite of the novel's concept.  The allied POW had been mocked, "cooed" at, and degraded.  Billy had even been told by a British soldier that the the coat he received from the German's was actually an insult.  "It was a deliberate attempt to humiliate you."  The Americans are also insulted by their allies, the British, for their illness.  The irony is, however, that the British were the ones that gave the American's their illness from the feast they had prepared.  Also contributing to the loss of dignity, Vonnegut speaks in first person for the first time since chapter one.  Vonnegut talks of an American in the latrine that nearly wailed everything out of his body, including his brains.  He then responds, "That was I.  That was me.  That was the author of this book."  By including himself in the complete loss of dignity, Vonnegut is clearly expressing the idea that war brings about the most brutal loss of dignity to even the most gracious of people.