Jokers and Doctors

Spending so much time with patients at a war zone, you get to know some people quite well. I've grown attached to quite a lot of kids who've come through here, but no people have touched me quite as much as the people from the 4077th.

On my first few visits there, it was mostly all work. The people were friendly and considerate but it takes longer than that to really get to know people. I guess it was sometime after Trapper McIntyre left and Henry Blake was killed that I really started to get to know the people there. I had been often for weekly poker sessions, but you don't get very personal with that because people are very guarded, hiding their emotions more so than usual. But as I say, after Henry's death I spent a bit of time with them all. Seeing them as a shrink or just a friend, although there's not really much difference between the two, but some people just can't admit that they need the kind of help that I give.

As time went on and I got to know people better, I realized that someone who I had always considered an open person was in fact the person I seemed to learn more about all the time.

Hawkeye Pierce.

On the outside this guy appears to be one of the most open people you'll ever meet. He's never shy about expressing his feelings when he's annoyed about something, that's for sure. He's also a very outgoing person who enjoys attention from others and likes to make people happy by joking around with them. So, he does at least appear to be quite centered, but it's all an illusion in a way. I've discovered that Hawkeye Pierce isn't a single, straight forward person. He's a multitude of people all sharing a confined living space. For he doesn't share it with just another but at least four others. Doctor Benjamin Franklin 'Hawkeye' Pierce. I know that he's a Captain, but the rank means nothing to him, he doesn't associate it with anything, so it also accounts for nothing.

He's multi layered personality can be broken down quite simply. Firstly, there's a child and an adult, then there's the professional and the joker. Each one shares the same host as the others but each is individual and unique.

Doctor is the most obvious of them all, the professional. When he visits those kids in post-op he is always Doctor. He's caring, gentle and compassionate. All that you want from your doctor with the good bedside manner. He's not quite Doctor when he's in O.R as strange as that sounds. He is mostly because he is using his most valuable asset to it;s full effect and to do good work. But there's also a little hatred for being in that situation, maybe that comes from the rank he's got. If he was in a hospital in the states, I think his O.R patter would be very different. However, I think after the war it'll be the thing that sticks more than anything else. I can almost hear him in surgery telling the nurses and doctors how much worse it was in Korea, during the war. He'll never be able to just let it go because it's so unjust.

The Doctors opposite is of course the Joker.

He's the part that can't take things seriously. He'll make the wise cracks in the middle of a serious discussion as though he physically can't stop himself from saying it. He'll joke around in the middle of taking shrapnel out of a kid that could die at any minute during a session in surgery. He'll also elevate boredom this way. By making others laugh, but usually at other people's expense. This very character gets split in two. There's the side of him that goes into the Officer's club in his most outrageous get up, just to see it brighten up a few faces and there's the side that relentlessly picks on people, Frank Burns being a prime target, and can at times be malicious and almost sadistic. Charles Winchester suffers the same fate as Burns, maybe there's just something in some people that makes Hawkeye pick them out. But even close friends can fall foul to this side of him. BJ is a practical joker, but Hawkeye can just be a bully. Radar for instance, idolized Hawkeye and in return he could do more to send that kid's confidence into the dumps than anyone else there. He can let the Joker over take him at times. The Joker may just be the most interesting side of him, but also the most deceitful, because you can't trust him like it. I also think it strongly relates to his relationship with women. It's the Joker that tells him to try his luck with them, because Hawkeye doesn't try to win them over, he tries to bowl them over with jokes, a fake personality and insincere flattery. The thing is, he can be very articulate with words and can be very honest, yet more often than not, he chooses this path. Interesting character, but ultimately a hurtful one.

The Child comes in the form of Benjamin. He's the only one who uses this name and I think this is the side he wants to get away from more than anything else. I'm not sure of all of his childhood traumas, but everyone has them. He tends to deal with them but blocking them out and trying to forget. I'm aware that his mother died when he was young, but he's never mentioned it to me. He has to be in all his childlike glory to talk about things from his past and I think that he tries to keep the loss he's faced as quiet as possible. Maybe he has skeletons in his closet that he wants no one else to know, maybe he just doesn't like to talk about his mother often. Whatever the reason, this is his real Achilles heel. It not only gets him from his early years, but it's the side that bleeds whenever all the others do here. It's the side that watches his friends fall to part and feels useless because he can't help them. It's the side that watches people die for a reason he can't understand and knows that he can't stop it. It's why he takes their deaths so personally, so badly. In his mind, it's the same as when he was a kid. All he knew was that at some point his mother was there and she was ill. Then she died and he was just a little boy who couldn't do anything. When he watches the lives of others slip away, he feels the same way. He's become a child again, and that's the hardest thing for him.

The last piece of the puzzle is the adult, Franklin. I figure that this is his most important person and hopefully the person he grow into a little more each day. He's the person who is Chief surgeon at a MASH unit. He makes difficult decisions each day and makes them to the best of his abilities. He's the one who can give advise and comfort to people around him when they're hurt. He won't judge people and shows assertiveness. He is the one who needs to take charge of the others. The Joker, The Professional and The Child and when he feels those parts taking over, has to act responsibly. Not always easy.

But, when you have all those people in one body and stick it together, that's what you get.

Doctor Benjamin Franklin 'Hawkeye' Pierce.

The End