Death Is An Escape!

    The Village has two cemetaries, one on the beach, that can't be real, can it? The other is somewhere in the woods, yet there is no church in the Village! What's more there is no priest presiding over Cobb's funeral, just an Undertaker and a group of professional mourners, professional mourners because they could not all have possibly known Cobb, not like No.9 claimed to have done. In any case Cobb wasn't really dead. He hadn't really jumped out of that hospital window, that was just for the Prisoner's benefit. So that to the Prisoner, Cobb would be dead, much in the same way that to the rest of the world in Dance of the Dead No.6 would be dead!
    There being no body in the coffin at Cobb's funeral, makes me wonder if anyone is buried in that graveyard down on the beach at all! Because the sea comes in right up to the base of the cliffs. The sands move, and the waves wash away.
   It was said of Cobb, by a hospital orderly, that he jumped out of a window having committed suicide. If Cobb had, who would not be the last, for Nadia Rakovski-No.8 was questioned about whether she was attempting suicide during The Chimes of Big Ben, and tried it again by electrocution in the Interrogation Room that time.
   No.73 was another, but she did jump through a hospital window, but it was not the first time she had attempted suicide. 73 had tried that earlier by slashing her wrists! I don't know why 73 jumped through that hospital window. True No.2 had threatened her, he even approached her bed, but he had not physically harmed 73. In fact if you watch the film of that scene in Hammer Into Anvil, 73 doesn't throw herself out of the hospital window until No.6 suddenly bursts in on the scene! So the question is, who was it who put that bunch of daffodils on 73's grave? Surely Not No.6, but then who else was there in the Village who was close to 73 to have done it, her husband perhaps? No, he was still somewhere over there! Perhaps it was No.6 who laid flowers on 73's grave, who no doubt regretted her death, and possibly seeing seen himself as some sort of avenging Angel!

    The Rook in Checkmate saw death as being an escape. 'One day I'll die and beat you all' he told No.6. this idea is played out in THEPRIS6NER09, where suffering a Village death does mean escape, escape to that 'other place,' their former lives outside the Village. For people like 455, 909, 832, and 415 it means back to their life in New York. But what of the 'old man' 93, who suffers a Village death in Arrival? The Prisoner buries the old man whom he encounters in the first few minutes of Arrival in THEPRIS6NER09, and after the old man dies the Prisoner buries the body somewhere out there in the desert, or does he? Later in Arrival, a funeral is held for the old man 93, Two claiming that 93's body has been found, which is something Six refutes, having supposedly buried 93's body in the desert. But he didn't you see, because like at Cobb's funeral before him, 93's coffin is empty. 93, who is a representation of, if not actually the former No.6, suffered a Village death. The only question remains, to which former life did he return? To that in London as the Prisoner, or that of the former Village as No.6?
I'm Piet Hein