Shane by Jack Schaefer
"Shane" by Jack Schaefer is a classic Western novel first published in 1949, centered around the transformative encounter between a wandering gunslinger named Shane and the Starrett family, who are homesteaders in Wyoming. The story unfolds as young Bob Starrett watches Shane ride into their valley, drawn by an inexplicable connection to the figure. As Shane becomes part of the Starrett family, he temporarily sheds his violent past and immerses himself in their humble way of life, symbolizing hope and strength against the encroaching threat posed by cattle baron Luke Fletcher. The conflict escalates as Fletcher seeks to maintain his dominance over the land, targeting Joe Starrett as a means to intimidate the other homesteaders. Through a series of confrontations, Shane ultimately reveals his true identity and purpose, leading to a climactic showdown that reflects both external and internal struggles. Schaefer's novel is noted for its rich themes of self-discovery, integrity, and the moral complexities of the frontier life, making it resonate with readers across generations. Its authenticity and exploration of individual worth contribute to its enduring popularity, having been translated into over thirty languages and continuously reprinted since its release.
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Subject Terms
Shane by Jack Schaefer
First published: 1949
Type of work: Historical fiction
Themes: Coming-of-age, friendship, gender roles, and family
Time of work: 1889
Recommended Ages: 15-18
Locale: The open range, the Starrett homestead, and Grafton’s saloon, Wyoming
Principal Characters:
Joe Starrett , a homesteader, whose determination to build a place for his family makes him a natural leader among the other homesteadersMarian Starrett , Joe’s wife, who matches him in her vision of the kind of home their place can becomeBob Starrett , their young son, who retells the story of the coming of Shane and of growing up in WyomingShane , a stranger running from his past who befriends the Starretts in their conflict with the rancher FletcherLuke Fletcher , a rancher whose resistance to change leads him to violence
The Story
When young Bob Starrett sees the distant figure of a horseman riding into their valley, he is drawn to it out of idle curiosity, but on closer inspection he senses that he has never seen anyone like the approaching rider. The stranger’s carefully patched clothing suggests an unfamiliar elegance, and his easy, fluid movements suggest a suppressed vitality, an energy waiting to be released. For Bob and the Starrett family, the rider’s chance drifting into their valley is to change the course of their lives.
The rider, who is only passing through, stops to water his horse at the Starrett homestead. He admires the permanence of the place, the shingled roof, the tight fences and solid buildings. When Bob’s father, Joe Starrett, invites the stranger to dinner, they engage in a mutual appraisal, “a long moment [of] measuring each other in an unspoken fraternity of adult knowledge,” that forms a bond of friendship between Joe Starrett and the man who introduces himself only as Shane.
For a brief interlude, Shane becomes a part of the Starrett family. He sheds his town clothes and his gun and dons the clothing of the farmer. Joe Starrett delights in showing Shane his place and his dreams, and Shane finds temporary peace in sharing the Starrett dream and the Starrett work. In a scene that foreshadows the coming conflict, Joe and Shane undertake to remove a stump, a remnant of a giant old oak that died long before the Starretts came into the valley. The stump has been a sore spot on the Starrett homestead, and Joe has been working on it off and on, but to no avail. When Shane and Joe tackle it together, the combination of Joe’s strength and Shane’s energy and precision with an ax becomes a force equal to the task.
The rancher Luke Fletcher, whose land surrounds the Starrett homestead and whose cattle fill the valley, remains an unspoken menace. His way of life depends on open range. Too many homesteaders spell the end of the open rangeland and an end to the cattle barons like Fletcher. Fletcher cannot see that he must change or break. He is sure that he can buy out or drive out the homesteaders and keep things the way they are. Because Joe Starrett is the strongest among the homesteaders and the natural leader, Fletcher targets the Starrett place. He knows that if Joe Starrett can be broken, the rest will leave of their own accord. Unwittingly, Shane stands at the center of the conflict: Break Starrett’s man, break Starrett; break Starrett and break the homesteaders.
Fletcher attempts to draw Shane into a situation in which he can be outdone. After Shane whips one of his cowhands in a fistfight and he and Joe take on and defeat Fletcher’s foreman and four of his hands, Fletcher ups the ante by hiring a gunfighter, Stark Wilson. Wilson provokes and kills one of the homesteaders in an uneven gunfight that Shane bitterly brands as murder. Shane’s bitterness comes from an inner knowledge. Unlike Fletcher, Shane has been here before. His condemnation of Wilson appears to be a comment on his past and a clarification of why he does not wear a gun.
When Joe Starrett refuses to be bought out, Fletcher maneuvers him into a situation in which he must face a confrontation or appear to be cowardly. Starrett knows that he cannot survive a showdown with Wilson, but he also knows that he will lose what he values most in life if he turns away. Marian, who has come to love both men, asks Shane to stay to save Joe. When Shane agrees, he knows that the time has come for him to acknowledge his inner identity.
Shane has to pistol-whip Joe in order to keep him from facing Wilson and Fletcher. He tells Marian that he is going to Grafton’s saloon, not only for her but also for Joe and young Bob, so that the Starretts will have a place and young Bob can grow up to be “straight inside as a man should.” When Shane faces Wilson and Fletcher, he is dressed as he was when young Bob first saw him, and Bob knows that he is looking at the real Shane. When Shane rides away from Grafton’s, both Wilson and Fletcher are dead. Fletcher’s time is finished, and so is the time of the gunfighter. Shane has been badly wounded in the gunfight, but he seeks no help and forbids anyone to follow him. He reassures Bob that things will be right now and rides into the night on the same road that brought him into the valley.
Context
From its first publication in 1949, Shane has been immensely popular. Shane was Jack Schaefer’s first novel, and it propelled him into immediate success. Since its publication in 1949, it has gone through seventy editions and has been translated into more than thirty languages. Its enduring popularity might be ascribed to Schaefer’s treatment of theme and to a sense of authenticity that permeates the novel. In Shane, as in Schaefer’s other works, he treats the struggle of the individual to know himself and his place in the larger context of the human condition. Shane’s external struggle may be the stuff of the action-packed Western, but it is secondary to his internal struggle to know and accept himself as he is, not as he might have been. Schaefer’s works express the belief in the worth of the individual and affirm that one is not a powerless entity shaped and ruled by social and psychological forces beyond one’s control. In Shane, Schaefer establishes the thematic context for the greater part of his work. His characters’ major victories are won within; the physical confrontations are manifestations of an unflinching integrity and an insistence on being true to oneself.
As a former newspaperman, Schaefer was insistent on getting it right. There is an authenticity of time and place that sets Shane apart from the run-of-the-mill Western, for Shane not only tells a good story; it also tells the truth about a time of transition on the American frontier.
It is not surprising that Shane is set in 1889 somewhere on the rangeland of Wyoming. In The Frontier in American History (1920), Frederick Jackson Turner set 1890 as the date which marked the closing of the American frontier. Moreover, the last great struggle between cattlemen and homesteaders took place in Wyoming during the so-called Johnson County War of 1891. The large ranchers attempted to defend their rights to open range by insisting that they were the targets of continual rustling, a charge that had some substance. Under the guise of protecting their herds and putting an end to rustling, the cattle barons imported hired gunfighters who began a program of assassination and terror in order to drive out the small ranchers and farmers. It is not recorded whether a paladin rose among the victims to bring about frontier justice, but it was just such a vision that brought Schaefer to create Shane.
Schaefer’s heroes share a common trait. Like Shane, they are willing to face the truth about themselves and they have the courage to accept the consequences of self-realization. These characters have flaws and quirks of behavior that take them into harm’s way, but they speak to the reader more eloquently with the passage of time for they represent the values from a time so ephemeral that the idea of the western frontier has more substance than does the reality. It is this vivid portrayal and universality that makes the work appropriate for young readers and popular among them.
Bibliography
Bold, Christine. Selling the Wild West: Popular Western Fiction, 1860 to 1960. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987. Compares Shane critically to other popular Westerns.
Haslam, Gerald. Jack Schaefer. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1975. An introductory survey of Schaefer’s major works.
Robinson, Forrest G. Having It Both Ways: Self-Subversion in Western Popular Classics. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993. Regards Shane as unconsciously revealing the dangers of Western “male hegemony.”
Work, James C., ed. Shane: The Critical Edition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1984. Includes critical essays, some discussing Shane as an allegory of good versus evil, the hero as mythic figure, and the novel’s considerable didacticism.