The Therapy Zone

The Prisoner Is An Inspiration

    Is No.6 really an inspiration to anyone who is deciding to pack-in their job, or having been told that they are unmutual, not that I think for one minute that anyone would actually say you were unmutual, not here in the outside world. However you might be "unmutual" by not having or showing any "respect" for others in this modern age we live in.

   True, I chucked in my job a few years back, but for very different reasons as those given by the Prisoner. Nor did I end up in the village or any such place like it. No, I'm living my life, not as the caveman did, but as I choose to do so, well as near as possible anyway. And as much a free man as any man can be.

   In some ways the Prisoner has influenced me to some extent, but one cannot be like No.6, not behave like him. After all the vast majority of us have responsibilities, unlike the Prisoner who looked like he was able to cut and run after handing in his letter of resignation, and without so much as a thought for anyone else. Yes we can be inspired by the Prisoner, but to to behave as he did, not to accept, not to be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. To choose not to conform or to settle down. Not to accept, wear or respond to his number, which No.6 did on occasion, not to mention joining in, settling down and to some extent accepting both his situation and the village. Because the community must live, and so must No.6. And if that is an inspiration to you, then so be it. But remember No.6's circumstances, that he was a member of the establishment before he resigned. And that if you resign, the only consequences of your action will be.. unemployment and a trip down to the Job Centre!

Number Six Plays The game

  On the morning of It’s Your Funeral after No.6 has been woken up by Monique-No.50, he shouts aloud for all the observers to hear "I won't go for it, whatever it is, so you may as well stop trying!" Yet during Many Happy Returns it was another state of affairs for No.6, because on discovering that the village was deserted, and not hanging around to find out why, he played right into the hands of the villages administration, such is his predictability. They knew their subject all too well, and that he wouldn't be able to resist the chance of escape!

   It's just a pity that No.6 didn't show a bit more of that individuality he's so keen on, not to go for it, whatever it is, so you might as well stop trying! He could have simply sat about waiting, and try to carry on the best he could, as there could only be a limited time in which the village could lay dormant.

    Number 6 could have started a fire, setting light to his cottage would surely have flushed the villagers out, along with the fire brigade! There are those who reading this, who would say that if No.6 hadn't carried out his escape from the village during Many Happy Returns we would not have had a story. As a writer I would say that the story would have simply taken another direction to the one we know so well.

Be seeing you.