Shane

Summary

Shane is a short Western novel in sixteen chapters, told years afterward by Bob Starrett, who was about eleven in the summer of 1889 when a stranger rode into his family's Wyoming valley. The rider, dressed in dark, fine clothes and calling himself only Shane, stops at the homestead of Joe Starrett, Bob's father, and Joe's wife, Marian. Joe, the steady leader of the small farmers who have taken up land along the valley, offers him work, and Shane stays on as a hired man. He turns out to be a tireless worker. In the novel's most famous scene, Joe and Shane spend a long afternoon chopping and heaving at a huge old stump that Joe has fought for years, until together they tear it out of the ground. The homesteaders are under pressure from Luke Fletcher, a rancher who has run cattle over the open range and wants the valley back. When Shane goes into town to Grafton's store, Fletcher's cowhand Chris taunts him for ordering soda pop, and Shane walks away; the valley takes it for cowardice, and Bob is ashamed. Shane later returns, fights Chris in the saloon and breaks his arm. Fletcher sends a larger crew, led by his foreman Morgan, and Shane and Joe fight them together in Grafton's in a long, brutal brawl that the two men win. Shane, though, keeps his gun put away, while showing Bob how to handle it and warning him about what a gun is for. Fletcher then brings in Stark Wilson, a hired gunman, who goads the hot-tempered homesteader Ernie Wright into drawing and shoots him dead. Fletcher offers to buy Joe out; Joe decides he must go into town and face Fletcher himself. Shane, knowing Joe cannot match Wilson, puts on his old gunman's clothes and, when Joe will not stand aside, knocks him unconscious with his pistol and rides to town alone. Bob runs after him and watches from the shadows at Grafton's as Shane kills Wilson in a fast draw and then shoots Fletcher, who has been waiting above with a gun. Wounded, Shane tells Bob to go home and that there will be no more guns in the valley, and rides away, never to be seen again. Joe, grieving, thinks of leaving the farm, but Marian persuades him to stay, and even Chris comes to ask for work. Schaefer, an Eastern newspaper editor, first published the story as Rider from Nowhere, a three-part serial in Argosy in 1946; Houghton Mifflin issued the revised and expanded novel in 1949, and George Stevens's 1953 film starring Alan Ladd made it famous.

Plot or Argument

• Chapters 1-2: The rider and the stump

  Shane arrives at the Starrett homestead in the summer of 1889, stays the night, and agrees to work for Joe; he and Joe tear out the great stump together.

• Chapters 3-5: The valley and its quarrel

  Bob learns of Luke Fletcher's claim on the range and the homesteaders' fences; Shane's past shows in small ways; Chris mocks Shane at Grafton's and Shane leaves without fighting.

• Chapters 6-8: Fists in Grafton's

  Shane returns and breaks Chris's arm; Fletcher's crew under Morgan comes for him and Joe, and the two win the fight in Grafton's saloon together.

• Chapters 9-11: The gunman

  Stark Wilson arrives; Shane teaches Bob about guns; Wilson provokes Ernie Wright into drawing and kills him, and the homesteaders' resolve begins to break.

• Chapters 12-14: Shane chooses

  Fletcher's offer and Joe's decision to confront him; Shane puts on his old clothes and gun, fights Joe to keep him home, and rides to town.

• Chapters 15-16: The fight and the farewell

  Bob watches Shane kill Wilson and Fletcher; the wounded Shane sends him home and rides away; the Starretts stay on the land.

Characters

• Shane, the stranger

  A former gunman who tries to live as a hired hand and finally takes up his gun again for the Starretts.

• Bob Starrett, narrator

  Joe's son, about eleven at the time, who idolises Shane and tells the story as a grown man.

• Joe Starrett, homesteader

  Bob's father, strong, honest and stubborn, leader of the valley's small farmers.

• Marian Starrett, Joe's wife

  Bob's mother, who feels the pull of Shane's presence and holds the family to the land.

• Luke Fletcher, rancher

  Cattleman who wants the open range back and drives the homesteaders toward ruin.

• Stark Wilson, hired gunman

  The killer Fletcher brings in, who shoots Ernie Wright and meets Shane in Grafton's.

• Chris, Fletcher's cowhand

  Taunts Shane, has his arm broken, and at the end comes to work for the Starretts.

• Ernie Wright, homesteader

  A neighbour whose temper lets Wilson goad him into a fatal draw.

• Grafton and Will Atkey, storekeeper and bartender

  Owner of the store and saloon at the centre of the town, and his bartender.

Lessons

• A man can try to change

  Shane comes to the valley to live as a farmhand and puts his gun away. Schaefer takes his wish seriously, and the ending asks whether a man's past can be left behind or only used, once, for others' good.

  • Why does Shane walk away from Chris the first time?
  • What does Shane give up when he puts his old clothes back on?
  • Could Shane have stayed in the valley after the fight? Why not?

• Work that builds a friendship

  Joe and Shane become friends over the stump, not over words. Shared labour on a hard job teaches each man what the other is worth.

  • Why does the stump matter so much to Joe?
  • What does Bob learn about both men by watching them work?

• Courage and the right use of force

  Shane tells Bob a gun is a tool, as good or bad as the man who uses it. The book separates Wilson's killing for pay from Shane's fight to protect a family, while counting the cost of both.

  • How is Shane's way of fighting different from Stark Wilson's?
  • Was Shane right to knock Joe out to keep him from going to town?
  • What does Ernie Wright's death show about anger and pride?

• Seeing a hero through a child's eyes

  Bob tells the story as a man remembering what he saw as a boy. His admiration shapes how Shane appears, and his mother's and father's reactions show more than he understood at the time.

  • What does the grown Bob understand that the young Bob did not?
  • Why do you think Schaefer chose a boy as narrator?

Context

The novel is set in 1889 in Wyoming, which became a state the following year. In the 1880s large cattle outfits that had grazed the public range clashed with homesteaders who took up claims under the Homestead Act and fenced their land; the clash came to a head in the Johnson County War of 1892. Schaefer draws on that conflict without naming real places, making Fletcher's ranch and Starrett's homestead stand for the open range and the settled farm.

Composition

Schaefer wrote fiction in his spare time while working as a newspaper editor in the East. The story first appeared as Rider from Nowhere, a three-part serial in Argosy in 1946; that shorter version lacked the stump-pulling scene. Houghton Mifflin published the revised and expanded novel as Shane in 1949. Schaefer had not been west of Ohio when he wrote it and relied on reading and research.

Reception

George Stevens's 1953 film, with Alan Ladd as Shane, Van Heflin and Jean Arthur as the Starretts and Jack Palance as Wilson, became one of the most admired Westerns. The book has been translated into some thirty-five languages, sold in the millions, and was voted the best Western novel by the Western Writers of America in 1985. It has long been read in American middle and high schools.

Comparisons

• the-last-of-the-mohicans

  Cooper's Hawkeye is the American ancestor of Shane: a skilled frontier fighter who protects settlers but belongs to the wilderness and cannot join their settled life.

• little-house-on-the-prairie

  Both books follow a homesteading family in the West through a child's eyes; Wilder's Pa and Schaefer's Joe Starrett are strong fathers proving up a claim against hard odds.

• little-britches

  Ralph Moody's memoir of a ranching boyhood in Colorado gives a true account of a boy learning to work and be a man from his father, as Bob learns from Joe and Shane.

• the-iliad

  The armed stranger who withdraws from fighting and returns to it out of loyalty echoes Achilles; both stories ask what a warrior owes to those he loves.

• my-antonia

  Cather's narrator also looks back as an adult on a frontier childhood and on a figure who shaped his life, with a similar mixture of memory and admiration.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Shane's clothes: the dark, fine outfit he arrives in, the work clothes he changes into, and the moment he puts the old outfit back on.
• The stump in Chapter 2 and how often it is remembered later.
• Shane's gun, which stays in his saddle roll until he shows it to Bob.
• Bob's shame when Shane walks away from Chris, and how his feelings change.
• How the grown narrator hints at things he did not understand as a boy, especially between his mother and Shane.

Key terms and names

Homesteader

A settler who claimed government land by living on it and farming it; Joe Starrett and his neighbours have done this along the valley.

Open range

Unfenced public land where cattle grazed freely; Luke Fletcher wants the valley kept for his herds.

Grafton's

The store, saloon and hotel that serve as the town's meeting place and where the novel's fights happen.

Gunman

A man who hires out his skill with a gun; Stark Wilson is one, and Shane was one before he came to the valley.

The stump

A great old tree stump on the Starrett place that Joe has never been able to remove, until he and Shane pull it together.

Wyoming Territory

The setting in 1889, a year before Wyoming became a state, when ranchers and homesteaders were struggling over land.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How do Joe Starrett and Shane get the stump out of the ground, and why did Joe never finish the job alone?
2. Comprehension What does Chris say to Shane at Grafton's the first time, and what does Shane do?
3. Comprehension How does Stark Wilson kill Ernie Wright?
4. Interpretation Why does Shane knock Joe out rather than let him go to town? Is this an act of friendship or of pride?
5. Interpretation Shane tells Bob that a gun is only as good or bad as the man using it. How does the ending test that idea?
6. Interpretation Why does Shane leave the valley after he has saved it?
7. Interpretation What does Marian understand about Shane that Bob does not, and how does the grown Bob show us?
8. Big Question Is it right for one person to use violence so that others can live in peace? What does that ask of the person who does it?

Faith Connections

• John 15:13 (Scripture)

  Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends. Shane rides to Grafton's in Joe's place, accepting the risk that was Joe's.

• Romans 12:17-21 (Scripture)

  Paul urges living peaceably and leaving vengeance to God. Shane's walking away from Chris fits this counsel, and the question of when to stop walking away is the novel's hardest.

• Hebrews 11:13-16 (Scripture)

  The faithful are called strangers and pilgrims on the earth seeking a homeland. Shane, who has no home and rides on, is a picture of a man who cannot settle.

• Augustine, City of God XIX (Great Conversation)

  Augustine argues that even just wars are tragic necessities that a good man regrets. Shane's sadness after the gunfight fits that view of force used for protection.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The homesteaders want to farm in peace, but Fletcher will use a hired killer to drive them out, and the law is too far away to stop him. Joe is brave but no match for Wilson, so only a man who has the gunman's skill can protect the valley. Shane has that skill and loves the family, so he takes the fight on himself; but having killed again, he cannot stay among the people he saved. The novel concludes that peace on the frontier may depend on a sacrifice by someone who cannot share in it.

Rhetorical device: retrospective first-person narration. The opening sentence, He rode into our valley in the summer of '89, sets the whole book as a grown man's memory, so that Bob's boyish wonder and his adult understanding sit side by side throughout.

Debate: Resolved: that Shane was right to take Joe Starrett's place in the final fight.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Shane changes clothes twice in the novel. Argue what each change says about who he is trying to be, using the arrival in Chapter 1 and the night he rides to town.

Comparison with The Last of the Mohicans: Compare Hawkeye and Shane as frontier protectors who cannot belong to the settled world they defend. Which author makes that loneliness more costly?

Medical Lens

There is little medicine in the novel, which has no doctor in it, but the violence is plain and physical. Chris's arm is broken in the saloon fight; the brawl with Morgan's crew leaves Joe and Shane battered and bleeding, and Marian tends their injuries at home; Ernie Wright is shot dead; and Shane rides away with a bullet wound whose seriousness Bob, and the reader, never learn. On the frontier of 1889 such injuries were dressed at home or not at all. A medical reader may note the novel's restraint: the narrator remembers the wounds as a child saw them, without clinical detail.

• Chapters 6-8

  Shane breaks Chris's arm; the brawl in Grafton's with Morgan's men, and Marian dressing Joe's and Shane's injuries afterward.

  Pain
• Chapters 9-11

  Stark Wilson goads Ernie Wright into drawing and kills him.

  Death Dying
• Chapters 15-16

  The gunfight at Grafton's; Shane, wounded, rides away.

  Pain Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write the evening after the stump comes out, from Marian's point of view, as she watches Joe and Shane at the supper table.

• Essay

  Trace the stump from its first mention to the day it is pulled, and argue what it stands for in the Starretts' life and in their friendship with Shane.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Joe Starrett and Luke Fletcher in which each argues for his claim to the valley.

• Classroom

  Make a timeline of every confrontation between the homesteaders and Fletcher's side, noting who chose to fight and who chose to walk away each time.

• Adaptation

  Compare the final scene of the novel with the ending of George Stevens's 1953 film and explain what each version does with Bob's farewell.

Further Reading

• Monte Walsh, Jack Schaefer

• Old Ramon, Jack Schaefer

  A Newbery Honor book about a boy and an old shepherd in the Southwest.

• The Virginian, Owen Wister

  The 1902 Wyoming novel that set the pattern for the Western hero.

• Shane (1953 film), George Stevens (director)