The Last Unicorn: as Magical as the Material
“ She doesn’t need me either, heaven knows, but she’ll take me too. Ask her.”
I love the Last Unicorn. Haunting, joyful, sorrowful, and beautiful all at once, the Last Unicorn is unlike anything I’ve ever read: deconstructive without being cynical, rhyming without being childish, and powerfully Christological capturing the humanity while not losing the awe. The novel peels back the layers and tropes of fairy tales, while acknowledging it is doing so. But this is not to reveal the hollowness of all fairy tales, but to strip away all that is false, refining the stories like gold. And at the center is the Unicorn, otherworldly and unfathomable, searching for her people.
Magic is disappearing. Alone for centuries in her lilac woods, where all creatures live in harmony and the season is forever spring, the Unicorn hears of the disappearance of all Unicorns. They are vanishing, and if people do see a Unicorn, they only perceive a white mare. Magic is so lost that people do not recognize the Unicorn: more majestic than any mare, more delicate than any deer, with a horn curved like a saber. Only a few recognize the Unicorn for who she is and they follow her: Schmendrick, a magician with no powers, and Molly Grue, an unshakable Maid Marian, neither maid nor merry.
Together, the three go on a quest to the realm of King Haggard, as desolate and ruinous as the king himself, one rumored to have hunted and killed all other Unicorns with the mysterious and mighty Red Bull. The Bull becomes aware of the Unicorn’s presence, chases her down, and overpowers her. As the Red Bull is about to kill the last Unicorn, Schmendrick, suddenly grasping and just as suddenly losing his magic, transforms her into a young human girl, Lady Amalthea, and the Bull, only tuned to Unicorsn, relents. Lady Amalthea rears against this mortal coil Schmendrick has shuffled on her, but it allows the travelers to enter the castle of King Haggard.
Haggard’s son, Prince Lir, becomes enamored of the Lady Amalthea and attempts to win her affections in the only way he knows how, as a Hero presenting the heads of beasts he has slain. Slowly, Lady Amalthea forgets she was ever a Unicorn, forgets her quest to find her people, and falls for the Prince, despite the many monstrous gifts he offers. She weeps as the thought of losing him, demonstrating that she truly has become human, for Unicorns feel no loss.
Haggard, however, realizes the truth of Lady Amalthea and shows her the Unicorns that he has captured, driven into the sea by the Red Bull. Fleeing King Haggard, The Lady, the Prince, the Magician, and Molly make their daring escape through the lair of the Red Bull. In a surge of understanding and power, Schmendrick turns Lady Amalthea back into the Unicorn, transformed yet again against her will, for now being a Unicorn separates her from Prince Lir. In the ensuing duel between the Unicorn and the Bull, she is once more overcome, and Lir sacrifices himself for the Unicorn. Fueled by his sacrifice, the Unicorn drives the Red Bull into the sea, freeing the Unicorns, who disperse into the land, transforming it. The victorious Unicorn heals Lir with her horn, and touches him a second time, before returning to her lilac woods, never to be seen again by the Prince.
The novel ends with sorrow and peace. Schmendrick now fully controls his magic and Lir becomes King. The Unicorn returns, but she too is changed. She knows sorrow and regret and love, which she could never have known as a Unicorn, only as a human.
The Last Unicorn deconstructs the fairy tale not to pry apart all meaning, but reveals the beauty hidden beneath the layers of dust left by passing time and decaying memory. Schmendrick recognizes that they are constructs in a fairy tale and therefore must play the roles that they are destined to play, but that the Unicorn is real in a way that they are not. We see the characters become their archetypes. Lir, Schmendrick, and Molly are not reduced to merely the Hero, Magician, and Maiden, but through the Unicorn they expand to become all that their archetypes were always meant to be. We see what it means for Lir to be the Hero, not in the bravado and self-aggrandizing of monster hunting but in self-sacrifice. Schmendrick becomes the Magician not by a power he possesses, but by a force that deigns to work through him. Molly is the Maiden, not for her inherent purity, but because she is made pure in the presence of the Unicorn.
The Unicorn is real beyond what fairy tales can dream to hold. She is powerfully Christological. She is an immortal being, unknowable, and set apart. She is holy. Her very presence is transformative to those who recognize her. She enters the world, and in doing so she becomes fully human. When she is transformed back into a Unicorn, she wins an incredible victory over the forces of evil and death, releasing the Unicorns to return to the world and transform it. Prince Lir shares in her resurrection, and like the Unicorn, he too is transformed, taking up the mantle of the King.
She is not a perfect type of Christ: her transformation into Lady Amalthea is unwilling. Yet, the Unicorn captures the awe and wonder of God often lost in the human ‘Christ-figures’ found in media. The very presence of the Unicorn is palpable and transformative. When people see her for who she is, it changes their world. She is inherently mysterious, distinctly inhuman, and in many ways, she is unknowable. Yet, she is tender and loving. Perhaps my favorite scene is when Molly first sees the Unicorn. Molly demands of the Unicorn where she has been, scolding her, and upbraiding her, the unicorn replies that she is here now, and Molly dries her tears in the Unicorn’s mane. Schmendrick defensively tells Molly that she cannot join them.
“You don’t know much about Unicorns,” [Molly] repeated. “She’s letting you travel with her, though I can’t think why, but she has no need of you. She doesn’t need me either, heaven knows, but she’ll take me too. Ask her.” The Unicorn made the soft sound again, and the castle of Molly’s face lowered the drawbridge and threw wide even its deepest keep. “Ask her,” she said.
The magic in and of the Last Unicorn is hard to describe, it resists possession and definition, but it seems to leap from the page. The Unicorns, as they bound away returning to the world, might slip across the boundary of what is a fairy tale and what is truly real, bringing magic into the world once more.
