What the Prisoner actually said was, he was going to escape
and come back. Escape, come back, wipe The Village off the face of the Earth,
obliterate it, and Number 2 with it. Well perhaps not those exact words, but
the meaning is the same. As it happens there was never any danger of the
Prisoner escaping The Village during ‘The Chimes of Big Ben,’ The Village was
far nearer than the Prisoner could ever expect it to be. In fact he had barely
left it, because the furthest he got was about thirty miles away along the
coast.
The thing with the Prisoner is, once he says he’s going to do
something, he does it. He once vowed in his opening speech of the local
election of ‘Free For All’ that he was going to discover who the Prisoners and
who the warders. Well he might not have found out then, but later in
‘Checkmate’ he is instructed in how to tell the Prisoners from the warders by
judging people’s attitudes. Prisoners are subservient, while warders would be
aggressive towards him. So where did that get the Prisoner? Absolutely nowhere,
except back where he started, on the chessboard!
But he’s a stubborn fellow our Number
6, he said he was going to escape, and eventually he did. The only trouble was,
he couldn’t wait to get back to The Village quick enough! After all he did say
that “I’m going to escape and come back.” Just as well for Number 2 and The
Village that the Gloster Meteor jet was an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft,
otherwise Number 6 might have fulfilled the second part of his promise, to wipe
the Village off the face of the Earth, obliterate it, and Number 2 with it!
Be seeing you
No comments:
Post a Comment