Everything you need to understand or teach The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.
The Last Unicorn weaves together a number of different themes, including the loss of enchantment, the limits of perception, the quest to redeem one's race, and the struggle to retain one's identity, but the overriding theme of the novel, the one that unites all the others, is the love of that which is transitory. The people of Hagsgate, cursed to prosper until Haggard's fall, ask Schmendrick: "How can we delight in our good fortune when we know that it must end, and that one of us will end it? Every day makes us richer, and brings us one day nearer to our doom. Magician, for fifty years we have lived leanly, avoided attachments, untied all habits, readying ourselves for the sea.
We have taken not a moment's joy in our wealth—or in anything else—for joy is just one more thing to lose." Hagsgate's response...
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Peter S. Beagle
