#but better written this time
Hawkeye has moments of ego where surgery is concerned, where he’ll talk about being the best, or when he says “if they look like stitches they aren’t mine,” but he also shows a surprising amount of humility. He says he wants to be god, in a way that acknowledges he knows he’s not and the his limitations bother him. He tells Mulcahy sometimes he can do things in surgery he isn’t really good enough to do. He’s often the one to step in and say “we’ve done all we can,” like in Death Takes a Holiday. He doesn’t want to do the spinal surgery in Bug Out because it’s not his specialty, but he does it anyway because no one at the 4077th is better qualified and the patient can’t wait or be transferred somewhere else.
He’s also usually pretty good at recognizing when someone else is better suited to an operation than he is, like when he says BJ should do the gastrectomy because he’s at least read about it, and I think there’s another episode where he has BJ do a cesarean on a local woman because he’s done one the most recently. He’s also the least bothered by the young surgeon in The Young and the Restless. It does get to him, which is confirmed when he tells BJ he wants to study the medical journal when he’s done, but he’s notably more mature about it than Charles and even BJ.
When he does talk about being the best, it’s usually true. He insists on taking all the chest cases in Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde because at that point he is the only thoracic surgeon at the 4077th. They all know that, too, which is part of why Henry lets him keep operating even though Hawkeye is going against orders. Before Charles shows up, Hawkeye is objectively the best surgeon in the camp, and even after Charles shows up Hawkeye is still better in some ways. So the ego he does show is mostly justified. I also think some level of ego is normal and necessary for a surgeon. A good surgeon has to be incredibly confident in their abilities. So while Hawkeye does have an ego, he’s also very aware.
All of this makes his comments in GFA incredibly striking. BJ is a good surgeon, maybe a great one, but Hawkeye is better, and everyone knows that and is comfortable with it, but it’s not something Hawkeye would normally throw at him. “I’m talking about the best surgeon you’ll ever see” is so angry. And the way he says “I’m a doctor, I put people back together” and disparages Sidney’s work and basically the entire field of psychiatry is also a departure from how he usually sees it. Hawkeye has previously always displayed a respect for what Sidney does and seen him as a more-or-less equal colleague. He’s usually the one to suggest a psychiatric consult for a patient and we see him react to people like Frank and Flagg dismissing psychiatry and mental illness.
It all comes together to show Hawkeye’s mental state in GFA as “I know better. I know best. Everyone else is wrong and they are doing something to me.” It’s paranoia. It’s simultaneously easy to see why his behavior would go in this direction (there is an existing level of ego there) and still pretty shocking because the difference is so marked.
