It's A question Of Personal Identity.
In ‘Arrival,’ the Prisoner is given his identity, an identity card, and badge which he wears on the lapel of his piped blazer. That identity of Six, his name is Number Six. This is a number that Six rejects, refuses to accept, or indeed respond to. Yet by the time of ‘The Schizoid Man,’ Number Six battles to keep his identity of Six, when another comes along proclaiming that he is Number Six!
You see, the Prisoner might have rejected his number, his identity of Number Six. But when push comes to shove, when someone comes along to try and strip Sis of even that very identity that he rejects, he will fight hell and high water to keep it!
A Closet Prisoner!
This is the view of the cloakroom, seen in the final episode of the Prisoner.
Three things are evident about the cloak room, the effigy of the Prisoner known as No.6. The two wicker baskets, and the two racks of coat hangers, which to me are suggestive. But suggestive of what? Well that No,6 was far from the first Prisoner to reach this far, by surviving the "ultimate teast." To me, these, swinging, coat hangers, could previously have held other prisoner's "own clothes" who had progressed at least this far, but with the ordeal of Fall Out yet to come, and did they, like No.1 gain the opportunity to meet......No.1? And if they did unmask No.1, who then did they see? Presumably like No.6...... themselves!
More than that, the number of bare coat hangers would suggest that the village has had a long and formidable experience of this process. And one final point, the Supervisor-No.28 said to the Prisoner "We thought you would feel happier as yourself." And don't forget, No.48 was also wearing his own clothes. So perhaps No.48 had been in that same cloakroom, a few moments before No.6.
The Prisoner
Suspence is the keynote of the series. the action is electrifying but, more than anything, these are stories of one man's personal courage and convictions. the emotional impact and intensely moving. "It tears at the heart," one member of the unit declared after seeing a rough-cut of the first episode.
Be seeing you
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