The Village is a place of isolation, it is a place isolated from the rest of the world. Patrick McGoohan had been thinking about how a man might react when placed in isolation, and eventually presented us with such a man in isolation, isolated from the environment of the outside world....the Prisoner Number 6.
Number 6 is never more isolated than in the episode of 'A Change of Mind,' when the whole population of the Village is turned against him, as Number 6 is posted as being Unmutual! Yet is it not also true that Number 6 isolated himself from the community of his own volition? Previously he had enjoyed the faciliteis of the gymnasium, shooting, fencing, his daily bout of Kosho practise. But now, Number 6 has built his own gymnasium somewhere in the woods, in an attempt to keep himself to himself, preferring his own privacy to the company of others, which could be seen as being anti social. Yet no man is an island, and before too long Number 6's isolation from the community begins to have an effect on him.
However isolation can come in many forms, in 'Many Happy Returns' Number 6 escapes the Village, returns to his own world, yet he is still a man in isolation because he has no money, the only things he possesses are the clothes he wears. Basically Number 6 has become a vagabond, a tramp, homeless and without friends, he no longer belongs to that situation from which he resigned, yet is desperate for both the Colonel and Thorpe to believe his story about the Village.
'Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,' this time Number 6 is deliberately returned to the outside world, the only trouble is it's in the form of another man, and all unpleasant memories of the Village have been wiped from his memory. In fact his memory has been taken back to the day the Prisoner was supposed to hand in his letter of resignation. Again he goes back to the only people whom he thinks can help him, his previous colleagues, but now has added the problem of convincing Sir Charles Portland that he is who he claims to be, but only as far as to intrigue Sir Charles, and it is his failure to prove who he is that isolates the Prisoner from both his own people, and that of the Village. He is a man left out in the cold by both sides. He cannot even sign a cheque for fear of a charge of forgery! His appearence may have been altered, but his handwriting is the same, and in the end, and as it turns out, it is his handwriting that proves his identity!
At the final turn of 'the Prisoner' with 'Fall Out,' in a way that caused Patrick McGoohan to became a man in isloation. Yes he may have his family about him, but it is the British general public who turn on McGoohan, perhaps seeing him as being Unmutual {although I doubt it} yet the meaning is there. Why? Because the British general public felt that they had been cheated by 'Fall Out.' People expected answers, but 'Fall Out' only muddied the waters even more, people didn't understand it and were outraged enough as to complain about it! Yet would we have respected Mcgoohan had he explained what 'the Prisoner' is all about? Should we have expected him to do so? If he had dotted all the 'i's and crossed all the 't's for us, he would have robbed us of all the fun we've had over the years and decades trying to figure out what 'the Prisoner' means to each and everyone of us, on an individual level that is.
I'll be seeing you
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