The Village!

    Number 6 was taken to The Village either to have the knowledge inside his head protected, or extracted, depending on which way you look at it. Mostly they, the administration behind The Village do not want to damage him, they don’t want a man of fragments, he’s far too important for so called extreme measures. In fact Number 6 is seen as having a future with The Village, most likely as a prisoner rather than being given a position of authority. Then occasionally Number 2’s brief is to break Number 6, as in ‘The Schizoid Man,’ and ‘Living In Harmony.’

   Number 6 can only know the forces who have incarcerated him in The Village, he can never know the reality behind the prison he finds himself in. It may have occurred to the viewer that Number 6 is the force behind The Village. That he is a prisoner of himself, that he created The Village in his mind, and Number 1 is himself, who he is trying to beat. But did that occur to Number 6 at the time?

    In allegorical terms, the fantasy, the hallucination of The Village becomes everything to the Prisoner {and perhaps for us}. That is perhaps why Number 6, having escaped the confines of The Village in ‘Many Happy Returns,’ suddenly cannot return to The Village quick enough. It would also give one explanation as to why at the end of ‘the Prisoner’ he is still a prisoner, and on his way back to The Village almost as soon as he has made his second return to London. It might be a simple fact that The Village is more preferable to London!

Be seeing you