MovieChat Forums > The Prisoner (1968) Discussion > From the last episode....

From the last episode....


Can you HAVE spoilers after 50 years ? well here they are

From the last episode are we to learn that...

1.) His own government was holding him..

(because)

2.) The Village was in England . (and not 30 miles from Poland)

or did I miss something ?

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That's far too literal an interpretation, as the series had gone into full & glorious multi-layered allegory. The brief glimpse of Number 1 unmasked shows who was holding Number 6 -- and who is holding each one of us, for that matter -- and The Village was both Everywhere & Nowhere (or, of you prefer, within us) (or, if you prefer, the entire manmade world).

I know, the trend today is to look for neat, tidy, logical answers -- but that would be far too restrictive & self-defeating for The Prisoner. In a way, the real question to be asked in this series isn't "Who?" (although it is vital on the symbolic level), but the question Number 6 asked in "The General": "Why?" The questions here are ultimately philosophical & existential, not simply factual.

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No, you weren't missing anything, but the point Patrick McGoohan was trying to make with this show was not to constrain your own mind with concrete answers, so that you were to interpret for yourself what you saw. I could give you an interpretation of Fall Out, but that would be telling.

If you paid attention, the Village was also thought to be somewhere completely away from Britain, where Number 6 wakes up to find the Village completely abandoned and he is allowed to escape, only to be delivered right back to the Village again. Yet, this contradicts what was seen in Fall Out, where the Village seemed to be in Britain itself, not too far from the main highway. So you can't take a literal interpretation of what you're seeing here. Otherwise McGoohan would've shown 6, 2, 48, and the Butler all sailing back to England rather than riding in the back of a trailer.

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