Tuesday, 21 June 2011

In The Village - Numbers Are as Individual As Names

    Every citizen in the Village is known by his or her number. And any one given time, there can be only one such number, such as 6, or 8, or 12 for examples. Unless of course you are No.2 or No.113, because we have seen that numbers in the Village can, at times, be subdivided, as in 113b, of those 2's who are memebrs of the Town Council 2a,2b, 2c, 2d, 2e, 2f, 2g, 2h,2i,2j, 2k, 2l. Or on occasion there can be two No.2's in the Village, as in It's Your Funeral, No.2 who is about to retire and dwells in his residence of the Green Dome. And an Interim No.2, the heir presumptive, to whom the position of No.2 is handed over during the Appreciation Day ceremony.
   Names are never used in the Village, apart from Cobb, Nadia Rakovski, Forthingay, Alison, Roland Walter Dutton, and Monique.....well that's because of the relationship between any two people. But as for the Prisoners name, well that is never used, not even by his fiancee Janet Portland, after she was back in her lovers arms after a year apart!
   As for the Prisoner and his number, he never accepted it, refused to wear it, save when it suited his purposes. And often he even refused to observe or respond to his number I am not a number, I am a free man the Prisoner shouts. But why oh why is No.6 so dead set against being a number? After all one of his code names by which he was known was a number ZM73.
   But then there is that episode of The Schizoid Man. Not only had they taken away his identity, given him a number, No.6, but in The Schizoid Man, they even took his number away from him! My, then you see No.6 fighting tooth and nail to keep his identity, to prove that he is No.6! There's just no pleasing some people.  Be seeing you

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