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Saturday 12 April 2014

The Man With No Name

    I think most of us are familiar with Clint Eastwood's character from the three Spaghetti Western films 'A Fistful of Dollars,' 'For A Few Dollars More,' and 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,' the Man With No Name. Although he is called by the names of Manco, Joe, and Blondie in the three films. But basically he's the Man With No Name.
    I suppose you could call the stranger above the Man With No Name, because if he has a name no-one ever uses it throughout the entire series of ‘the Prisoner,’ although in his time he has been known as Duval, Schmitt. ZM73, and he once called himself Peter Smith, and the Colonel in Many Happy Returns called him Number Six, to which the Prisoner took great offence! So, in the Village he goes by the name of Number Six. Yet in ‘Living In Harmony’ even this name is taken away from him, and truly becomes the Man With No Name , a 'drifter,' a 'high plains' drifter!
    But before this Man With No Name became a drifter, he was a Town Sheriff of an American Wild west frontier Town in the late 1800's. It was a job from which he resigned, no letter of resignation, but simply signified by the handing in of both his badge and his gun. But why did he resign? A town Sheriff is open to many dangers as he tries to keep the peace. There might be a gang come riding into town, say the James gang, the Dalton boys, the Youngers, or the Clanton gangs, to rob the Bank. And the Sheriff would have to try and stop them, and if he couldn't, then he'd have to form a posse and go after the Bank robbers. A Sheriff, worth his salt, would have to be fast on the draw, otherwise he wouldn't last very long. But then the faster on the draw the Sheriff became, so much greater his reputation, and that in turn would attract every gunslinger out to make a reputation for himself, to Town. And each time the Sheriff, who got paid very little, would have to stand up to each and every gunslinger who came to Town, and more than likely would have to face him, or them in a gun-fight. In time, this sort of thing can wear a man down, the killing. Having to put his life on the line every day, for little pay, a few dollars a month. So perhaps this one time Sheriff was fed up with the killing he had to do. Fed up with having to get up every morning, to face having to put his life on the line which became too much for him, as it did for many of the time. So it could be as simple as that, as to why the Man With No Name resigned!

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