It’s All In The Meaning

   “We’re not quite sure what it means,” said one member of the Awards Committee. And neither were we, not until Number 6 explained it to us. He said it means what it is, but what is it? ‘The Prisoner’ can mean different things to everyone, and no two people may have the same ideas, yet may agree on others. Forty-eight years on, and still enthusiasts differ about the meaning of ‘the Prisoner.’ That’s because there is no one definitive meaning to ‘the Prisoner,’ explanations, theories, and interpretations are as varied as the individuals who appreciate the series.

   ‘The Prisoner’ created more questions than it answered, what’s more Patrick McGoohan wasn’t quite so forthcoming about the series as Number 6 was about explaining his abstract sculpture. It all depends on how you look at it, and there is more than one way of doing that. ‘The Prisoner’ a work of art? Well it has been described as being so, abstract art perhaps, but mostly surrealist.

    ‘The Prisoner’ left so many unanswered questions, and there’s no chance of getting answers to those questions now. So we are left to interpret those unanswered questions for ourselves, rightly or wrongly. I cannot think of another forty-eight year old television series which left so many unanswered questions, still having the ability to vex us today.

Be seeing you