Jack Schaefer’s novel Shane is a work that at first glance seems political in a direction which could cause it to be affiliated as an ally of socialist theory, as a story that puts forth a hero who stands for the common man and fights off the tyranny of capitalist expansion, using force as an absolute last resort, but using it, nonetheless, when it proves necessary.
This book’s plot displays a struggle that is paramount to the plot of the novel: the struggle of a group of farmers attempting to hold on to their land against a rancher who wants nothing but profit and will stop at nothing to force the farmers off of their land, even going so far as murder.
This story, its hero, and the play out, strongly lean towards a bourgeois tale of triumph, but is that really what is being said in this text, or are there some undercurrents of other subtle messages that not only contradict the positive pro-worker political context in this piece, but even go so far as to be a series of cleverly designed devices that help the ruling status quo maintain their authority? Do a series of subtle messages in Shane result in oppression?
Is Shane a work that uplifts the common man from oppression, or is it a prime example of what Horkheimer and Adorno warned of when they stated: “Tragic fate becomes just punishment, which is what bourgeois aesthetics always tried to turn it into.”[1] This paper is an examination into the text with a detailed reading, in hopes of showing the argument that the political influence of Jack Schaefer’s Shane may not be as Marxist friendly as it may first appear.
The premise of the novel Shane would seem to start out promisingly enough for the Marxist reader. In a town you have a rich rancher, Fletcher, who with a group of henchmen is trying to force all the small farmers to sell their land to him. When they refuse to be bribed with money, he turns to more aggressive methods and uses the authority granted to him by his wealth to bully the others.
Joe Starrett is the farmer who is most vocal in refuting Fletcher, and speaks about the best interests of the farmers as one of them. Joe is the one who meets Shane, who never gives a last name. Everyone understands when they meet him that Shane is a dangerous man, but only if you choose to make him an enemy.[2]
As Shane stays and becomes a part of the family, he is forced into a fight where he breaks the arm of one of Fletcher’s men. Fletcher tries to buy the loyalty of Starrett and Shane, and both refuse him. Fletcher then brings in a gunfighter, Stark Wilson, who goads a farmer into a fight and kills him. Shane, under an assumption of moral justification, re-appears with the gun everyone new he had, but he never revealed until then. He goes into town to confront Wilson and Fletcher, and ends up killing both, while getting shot himself.
Immediately following is the most famous scene from the book, and the movie, which closely follows the novel’s plot, in which a wounded Shane explains to Joe’s boy, Bob, why he has to go before he rides off, though not without leaving the question of whether or not he is dead, something never explicitly stated, but circumstantially hinted at.[3]
At first glance, there is little to dispute here. The rich try to oppress the poor, and after Fletcher, who very much represents the bourgeois hungering after power and money, goes too far and murders a hot tempered farmer, Shane uses violence to solve the problem and the farmers are allowed to keep their land-but after a little more background let’s concentrate on the late sections of this novel for analysis to see what messages it really brings out.
The author chooses to narrate the story through Bob’s eyes, therefore making the narrator a child who by the end of the novel learns the first of “life’s lessons.” Shane appears and is invited in by the family in exchange for a fair day’s work, which he provides without hesitation. Every person’s impression of him: the father, son, and wife is one of respect and admiration even off the bat. Even when the subject is broached with the wife worried about Shane being dangerous, Bob’s response is:
“He’s dangerous all right,” Father said it in a musing way. Then he chuckled. “But not to us, my dear.” And then he said what seemed to me a curious thing. “In fact, I don’t think you ever had a safer man in your house.”[4]
Even by the first night Shane is seen as honorable and loyal, even though no normal man could possibly prove that in so short a time. Already from his first appearance the character of Shane is one who appears to have some of the positive traits that tend to be associated with heroes and role models. As the novel goes on everyone knows Shane can fight, yet he often choose not to, wanting to avoid violence, and even questioning his manhood near the end of the novel after he shoots Wilson and Fletcher.[5]
Throughout the novel there is never a single moment where Shane appears immoral or weak. He seems to be the epitome of a “superman” who is a hero in every definition. But if he is a hero by general consent, is he not a hero of the empowered majority, which would make him a banner carrier for the status quo? It would seem the character of Shane is certainly meant to be a hero. Schaefer, the author, describes the goal of all his work as: “Taking a distinct and individual character and pitting him against specific human problems to show how he rose to meet it.”[6]
This perspective of viewing the character of Shane as a hero is not uncommon, and the use of this novel to pass on organizational culture to the younger generation is common place. In the essay “Maturity in Judging Fiction,” Dunning notes that: “Shane, himself, was man enough for any of my students; the novel had action, conflict, a happy-sad ending-the basic ingredients of popular taste!”[7] This quote is very telling in that it displays not only a definite passing on of values and judgments of the status quo, the type that Horkheimer and Adorno warn us about, but also the second half of this quote is very telling since it lists a series of positives that make it part of “popular taste.” These values are part of the status quo, and the character of Shane as the epitome of these values pushes it even further. George T. Kalif goes so far to refer to the character of Shane as a “superhero” his students can look up to.[8] If the character of Shane was truly one that the proletariat could relate to, then why is he so widely taught and admired by the status quo power structure? If there is any doubt that the text in the novel itself at least somehow plays into this notion, that the work is itself complicit and this is not simply the misinterpretation of a quality work, then keep in mind the perspective of Shane from the boy, Bob, as early as chapter two: “He was a man like father in whom a boy could believe in the simple knowing that what was beyond comprehension was still clean and solid and right.”[9]
Further emulation of Shane as a hero occurs later in the novel, after the first bar fight where Shane is wounded. The feelings had been growing between Shane and Marian, and they both loved each other. This is explained as she didn’t not love Joe anymore, but loved both men, and Shane was honorable and would never act on it. Joe understands his wife also loves Shane, and tells her: “Don’t fret yourself, Marian. I’m man enough to know a better when his trail meets mine. Whatever happens will be all right.”[10] Joe’s understanding of the situation is amazing-quite frankly unbelievable. He shows unwavering trust in both his wife and Shane, unwavering loyalty, and in that chapter he acts as a proxy to Shane since in that moment he is saying and acting exactly the way that Shane would if the roles were reversed. This causes hero worship even within the text, which is sure to be picked up by the reader, and also emulated, if not careful.
The argument over Shane isn’t whether or not he is a hero-in the context of this novel he is, and he is a hero that shows the traits that one would assume see on a hero with a Marxist mantle, but if this character helps push forward the belief system of the status quo, then why does he seem like a potentially good figure for the common man, and through that, the common worker? This comes to one of the key arguments of this thesis, which is that the character of Shane is used to reinforce the status quo by being pushed up as too great a hero, and thus teaching readers at a younger and younger age that progress can not take place without a man of similar ability. Since the perfect man does not exist, and Shane appears as perfect a man as in any work of literature, the reader is thus conditioned to learn, subconsciously, that the fight can not be won without this hero, who will never appear in real life, thus stealing from the masses their power.
To give evidence to this point: when Shane first arrives in chapter two[11] he believes in going to work so he helps to remove a stump. The stump was even described by Bob as the bane of his father’s existence, yet with Shane there, it only takes a few days and the two manage to remove it completely. As the show down between the rancher who has the money to abuse his power, and the farmers takes place, even Joe is ready to give up in despair, and another farmer is killed when he tries to make a stand. Even though it costs him his life,[12] Shane’s decision to use the necessary force ends in victory, as Shane was the only one in town even remotely capable of killing Stark Wilson.
The ambiguousness of Shane’s wounds, and the author’s refusal to call them outright fatal, adds an additional layer to this section, since now Shane is alive enough to give the following speech:
“A man is what he is, Bob, and there’s no breaking the mold. I tried that and I’ve lost. But I reckon it was in the cards . . . There’s no going back from a killing, Bob. Right or wrong, the brand sticks and there’s no going back. It’s up to you now. Go home to your mother and father. Grow strong and straight and take care of them. Both of them. There’s only one thing more I can do for them now.”[13]
In this situation, instead of dying a martyr’s death at the site of the fight itself, Shane gives a speech that makes the question of his death irrelevant, since his speech forces him into exile even if he was capable of recovering, meaning a separation from the workers’ hero and themselves once again.
In this way, while Shane can be perceived as an admirable hero, his presence and function in the story has a second hand affect of teaching that though the struggle is constantly taking place, it needs a hero for the workers to win. Without a hero, the status quo (Fletcher and the law that refuses to stop him) will not only win, but destroy anyone who dares to stand up to them. But Shane is too perfect a hero. In this work he carries power on him without displaying his weapons, and he is an impossible balance of sinlessness and capable force. In a way, Shane appears as a Christ like figure until the time for battle takes place, at which time he is an unmatched warrior . . . but associated with workers and therefore doomed, even in victory. This metaphor has not escaped the attention of theorists. Michael Marsden points out:
“The birth of a new land demanded the simultaneous birth of a new culture, with its roots necessarily in the past, but its blossom in the present of the never-ending frontier. It is logical, therefore, to suggest that notions of a Savior, a Messiah, would have undergone a similar transformation from the Christian Savior of almost nineteen hundred years of European cultural refinement to a Christ equipped to serve the essentially different spiritual needs of a new and separate culture. Nowhere is this transformation more clearly seen than in the Western film.”[14]
Because Shane is too perfect a hero, perhaps because of a cultural need to replace the sanitized and formalized Christ of Western European Christianity with a grittier figure that could provide a practical salvation to the downtrodden, this book in a subtle way doesn’t strengthen the masses of workers, but teaches them to wait for the hero instead of taking immediate action. This sets them at a perpetual disadvantage waiting for a hero who will never come, and accepting a mindset of assumed defeat without fighting a battle.
Even beyond this use of the character hero Shane as a tool for the status quo of the proletariat, this novel reinforces other values, particularly American cultural values, which are necessary in order for the ruling class to push forward their agenda. Since America is a young country, stories such as Shane can be particularly powerful since there is not a long history of legends and heroes to help give identity, and thus there is often a hole in the national culture that results in the need for heroes to fill that incompleteness.
One of the cultural beliefs spread by Shane into the American ethos is what John G. Cawelti refers to as “the six-gun mystique.”[15] Because America wants to view itself as moral and peace loving, some explanation has to exist for a history that though short, is stuffed with examples of violence against others and against each other. Here Cawelti explores “the theme of the moral necessity of violence in some of our most pervasive literary formulas.”[16] The Western novel is certainly formulaic, and a popular genre that is renown for reinforcing the idea of moral violence. Westerns are perfect in exemplifying this trait because, as Cawelti points out, “The gun is our prime symbol of moral violence.”[17] Is it any surprise, then, that if a hero figure were to reinforce these industrialized morals, it would be from a moral cowboy-one so much so that you never even see the gunslinger’s gun until right before the final showdown. In this way, Shane fits the perfect image of what Americans want to see in a hero-the traditional amazing fighter, but one who wishes to escape violence and only uses it as a last resort.
What is interesting is that the section Cawelti points out as a case study helping to prove his theory is a section of the book that was kept almost exactly the same in the movie production of Shane. This emphasizes the strength of the scene of Shane preparing for the gunfight with Wilson and Fletcher, and leading into the violence itself. Cawelti shows:
“When it is evident that appeals to legal process or morality cannot stop the rancher from driving the peaceful farmers out of the valley, Shane buckles on his guns, knocks out Joe Starrett to prevent him from facing the professional killer, and rides into town, where he shoots both Wilson and the villainous rancher. Shane’s killings are presented in such a way that violence is not only seen to be inevitable in relation to the plot-since the rancher will not give up his open range except over his dead body-but morally right and even transcendent.”[18]
Not only does this action have a strong effect on the reader, but the way the book describes the scene, not only does Shane seem justified, but the feeling evoked is that he is so natural as a gunfighter that he was never truly complete in the novel until he had his guns back, and used them.
As these arguments have shown, the character of Shane fulfills not only a cultural gap of a need for morally justified violence, and even morally justified killing, but on a subconscious level the basic need for hope or structure that was for centuries provided by religion is now being replaced by another “sinless” and “good” figure who fulfills the needs of hope and justice in a practical way that is far easier for this new generation of men to grasp, and thus the use of culture may be far more powerful than even Horkheimer and Adorno imagined, since this is not only the power of culture that is pushing the status quo, but that culture is also seizing the power that religion once held.
A litmus test on whether or not Shane, generally considered one of the best Westerns (book or movie) ever made, can be by applying Horkheimer’s question of mass production to it. Can the story of Shane hold any uniqueness, or is it easily copied in order to further perpetuate social norms? Well the role of the character Shane as a possible replacement for Christ as a Messianic savior has been well shown, and he certainly contributes to Cawelti’s six-gun mystique.
What is telling is how the theme of the novel is not unlike hundreds of other Westerns. In fact, the formula almost demands that every single novel in the genre starts out the same way. A stranger comes to town. In the article, “Worthy Westerns” even as the novel Shane is mentioned as one of the great Westerns, after a brief description of the plot is given John T. Frederick describes the plot as “This hackneyed pattern.”[19]
It’s not the plot that sets this novel apart. A stranger comes to town, finds the good but troubled family, feels like he becomes part of their family, and after they’re threatened he picks up his guns again (always reflecting on how he couldn’t leave his past behind) and then saves the day. Sometimes the hero rides off in the sunset, sometimes he dies. Sometimes he does both. Yet this is one simple plot, but it is copied literally thousands upon thousands of times. This can only be seen as a prime example of the status quo reproducing mass art that works to help control the general population. Through the constant reproduction of the plot in Shane, the powers that be reinforce the ideas of needing a hero, of morally justified violence, and of the inability to change. Even Shane’s last speech confirms that, using the language of a doomed man who simply could not be what he was not, and in that, somehow justifying the moral choice of killing for the good of saving the family.
The end metaphor of the novel is surprisingly telling and applicable to the process of manufacturing culture. When Joe isn’t sure he has it in him to keep going, it’s his wife who forces him to stay, pointing to the fence post (acting much as the metaphor of the cornerstone from the Christian Bible)[20] as showing that Shane was still there, still with them, and would always be with them.[21] This is followed with a description that could have been pulled right out of the Christian Bible in equating Shane to the Holy Spirit. Something natural (the stump) was replaced with something resulting from industrial labor (the post). This is the process that industrialization often takes, and it is the same thing the mass production of culture is trying to do, replacing a Messiah with a perfect hero, creating a subdued base that will be easier to control.
At first glance, the hero riding into town to help defend the common farmer against the evil forces of greed caused by capitalism, represented by Fletcher, and giving up his life as a sacrifice sounds like a noble work, possibly rife with political innuendos that would make this an acceptable piece of art by Marxist standards, but a closer inspection has revealed something else. There are plenty of political subtleties and under currents, but a close examination reveals them to be political movements towards keeping the culture of the status quo in power, and even strengthening it. Give the masses a hero who will never appear, and watch them wait for eternity to fight back. Not only is mass culture dangerous because of its ability to spread hidden ideology, often even to those trying to watch out for it, but as certain heroes become heroically sacred figures, the strength culture has only grows and expands.
Even given the benefit of the doubt, Shane still cannot be considered a text that is advocating the politics of the worker. The hero is no doubt personally admirable, which is part of what makes this work so effective and engaging, but also politically dangerous. At best, from the political point of view, it is a conflicted text, but certainly not a champion to the proletariat, the way a real life Shane might be, if he could possibly exist.Works Cited
Cawelti, John G. Myths of Violence in American Popular Culture.”Critical Inquiry 1 (1975): 521-541.
Dunning, A. Stephen. “Toward Maturity in Judging Fiction: An Approach to Schaefer’s “Shane”.” The English Journal 49 (1960): 22-26.
Frederick, John T. “Worthy Westerns.” The English Journal 43 (1954): 281-296.
Holy Bible. New International Edition (NIV). Textbook Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984.
Horkheimer, Max & Adorno, Theodor. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” The Norton Anthology: Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1220-1240.
Kalif, George T. Jr. “Arvado, Hote, Superswine, and Shane.” The English Journal 83 (1994): 90-91.
Marsden, Michael T. “Savior in the Saddle: The Sagebrush Testament.” Shane: Critical Edition. Ed. James C. Work, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. 393-404.
Schaefer, Jack. Shane: Critical Edition. Ed. James C. Work, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
Torres, Louis. “Jack Schaefer, Teller of Tales,” Part I, Aristos Oct. 1996: 48-58.
[1] Horkheimer, Max & Adorno, Theodor, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” The Norton Anthology: Theory and Criticism Ed. Vincent B. Leitch, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001) 1235.
[2] Schaefer, Jack, Shane: Critical Edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press) 1984.
[3] Schaefer
[4] Schaefer, 75
[5] Schaefer, 263
[6] Torres, Louis, “Jack Schaefer, Teller of Tales,” Part I, Aristos Oct. 1996: 54.
[7] Dunning, A. Stephen “Toward Maturity in Judging Fiction: An Approach to Schaefer’s “Shane”” The English Journal 49 (1960): 24.
[8] Kalif, George T. Jr, “Arvado, Hote, Superswine, and Shane” The English Journal 83 (1994): 90-91.
[9] Schaefer, 91
[10] Schaefer, 203
[11] Schaefer 76
[12] The discussion on this point is still open. The author would never answer questions on whether or not Shane was dead at the end, and so it is often played up as the true hero riding off into the sunset, but the clues from the text suggest a severe stomach wound that was killing him even as he rode off, the way people talked later certainly indicates a dead man, and if we use the evidence to assume his death, there is an interesting selfless martyr aspect that would play to Shane as a Christ like figure, which he seems to be at least similar to.
[13] Schaefer, 263
[14] Marsden, Michael T. “Savior in the Saddle: The Sagebrush Testament” Shane: Critical Edition Ed. James C. Work, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984) 393-404.
[15] Cawelti, John G, “Myths of Violence in American Popular Culture” Critical Inquiry 1 (1975): 525.
[16] Cawelti, 525
[17] Cawelti, 525
[18] Cawelti, 526
[19] Frederick, John T, “Worthy Westerns” The English Journal 43 (1954): 281-296.
[20]Holy Bible, New International Edition (NIV) Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984. The phrase “Cornerstone” is used to refer to the coming of the Messiah, or in referring to Jesus as the Messiah in Job 38:6, Isaiah 28:16, Zechariah 10:4, Ephesians 2:20, 1 Peter 2:6. The term “cornerstone” referred to a foundation from which everything else was built-which very much accurately describes the post that Shane set firmly, which all the strongest fences were connected.
