Mister Number Six that’s me now, doesn’t sound so bad does it? I am not a number, I am a free man. Well I am a number and I’m not a free man, but I am still a person, I will not allow myself to be reduced by numbers. But at least I have an identity, something I didn’t have before I arrived here in The Village. Before that I was a non entity, a man with no name, which suited my time in Harmony quite well.
Once they tried to take my number, my very identity away from me. But I know who I am, I’m Number Six, I told them, and no I didn’t need a badge to remind me that I am their Number Six. Not that that’s what numbered badges are for. They are to tell other people who you are, it’s like a calling card you wear on the lapel of your blazer. Mind you one time I wasn’t Number 6 at all, I was Number 12, I suppose that made me two times 6 seeing as I was supposed to go about The Village impersonating myself! There’s a saying used in The Village, six of one and half a dozen of the other. If my number wasn’t Six that phrase would have less meaning here, six of one, that’s me, half a dozen of the other that’s the other Six. Well it was until Rover got him, put the fear of God into Number 2 that time I did. He thought it was Number 6 who was dead! Just as well it wasn’t, otherwise it would have been Curtis who attempted to escape The Village by impersonating me. As it was, it was me trying to escape the Village by impersonating Curtis as though he had been impersonating me………….I think.
The Schizoid Man is one of my favorite episodes of The Prisoner. I like the episodes that try to use mind control to get him to tell why he resigned. He told them several times that it for peace of mind...but you can't convince anyone that refuses to hear what you are saying.
ReplyDeleteI have always found it fascinating watching tv shows that show someone going into a mental hospital as a "patient"...sometimes it's easier to appear crazy than it is to appear sane. Sanity is in the eye of the beholder...are any of us really sane????
How would any of us react to being drugged and shocked, food made to taste bad to "change our preferences" and then shown someone who is supposed to be us? However, we are all individuals..even children from the same family experience a completely different world from their siblings.
That also means that we have knowledge that no one else has...even if it's only a little thing..or something like a spouse having died , though still carrying pictures from the past.
It's interesting to consider the implications of personality...how we see ourselves and how others perceive us.
I also liked "A Change of Mind" and "A,B and C" and "Living in Harmony" because of the mind game aspects.
Be Seeing You
Hallo Karen
DeleteI don't think it was that they were not listening, but that they needed to know more detail, and the only extra detail he gave them was because it was a matter of conscience, and because too many people know too much!
There is a thin line between sanity and madness, and at times there is genius in the madness. Because insane people are sometimes the more clever, some devotees of 'the Prisoner,' and sometimes I include myself in this, are of the opinion that The Village is all in the mind of Number 6. Well he'd have to be insane to create such a place, a prison, and then put himself in it as a prisoner and warder combined!
Although I like episodes which play with the mind, I prefer the adventurous episodes of the series. 'Arrival,' 'Free For All,' 'Many Happy Returns,' Dance of The Dead,' 'Checkmate,' 'Hammer Into Anvil, and 'The Girl Who Was Death.' Because although 'the Prisoner' can be played out on many levels, I enjoy it for its pure escapism, and that is a particular preference of mine.
Best regards
David
Be seeing you