On the outside, the movie Shane looks like a movie that showcases a classic battle of good and evil, but taking a closer look, it is a movie that hones in on more complex American ideals. Set in the Grand Tetons after the Civil War, Shane follows a family of Homesteaders, the Starretts, and a man trying to escape his past, Shane. They struggle to retain the rights to their land as a cattle baron, Ryker, tries to force homesteaders off of it. Shane moves in with the Starretts, and the Starrett’s son, Joey, idolizes him throughout the movie. In the end, Shane kills Ryker and his men, knowing it will save the Staretts and other citizens, yet force him to leave. He rides off in the distance while Joey cries for him to come back. All of this takes place with any real law enforcement (ex. police) too far away to interfere.
On its own, the idea of citizens buying land and getting a fresh start is a fundamentally American idea. The Starretts, searching for a better life for their family, start a farm in the Grand Tetons. With the looming threat of losing their land and their new life along with it, the Starretts fight back, preserving their American right. Likewise, Shane pursues a new life, which is a fresh start from his past. He is attracted by the family style of living the Starretts share, and he, too, fights for his right to keep the life he made for himself. However, he fights the good fight by laying low and not causing trouble, even when he knows he has the power to kill someone if he wanted to. At the end of the story he sacrifices his new life for that of little Joey’s, the future of America.
In the movie, Shane is depicted as the ideal American Citizen of the time, as he has strong morals and uses them to pursue the American dream. However, when he feels things aren’t right, and there isn’t law enforcement to intervene, Shane takes matters into his own hands, letting go of the life he’d built for himself in the process. Joey’s aggressive idolatry of Shane only solidifies his role as the classic American Hero.
The chilling ending of the movie raises the question of whether Shane absolutely had to go. He did a good thing for the Starretts, and Joey’s calling for Shane to come back makes it clear that he would love for Shane to stay with his family still. However, Joey is naive, and doesn’t yet fully understand the mark killing a man leaves on people. Though all acts of heroism require some sacrifice, it is worth questioning whether one can achieve the American dream and be an American hero at the same time.
10 replies on “Shane”
In the context of the settling/founding of America, what do you think Shane represents? Starrett and the homesteaders? Ryker and his gang?
I think you pose a very interesting question as to whether it was the right thing to do to leave. In Shane’s last discussion with Joey, he reveals another motivation to his leaving that fits in with the American Dream and American Hero angle you have taken on this so far.
At the outset of the movie, the plot is written to reveal that Shane is a gunfighter who just came from a place where conflict was normal and his life was constantly in danger. When Shane first rides up to the Starrets he is very jumpy and reaches to draw his gun at lightning speed whenever he hears a loud noise. For people 70+ years ago the gunfighter was a much more popular American archetype than it is now so those scenes would have been a dead giveaway.
As the plot develops, Shane does everything he can to leave that identity behind. He begins to work as a farmhand on that first night without being asked Starrets(when he helps Joe cut the stump). He also promptly decides not to carry his gun and does not have it on him for most of the movie.
I believe that Joe caught on to Shane’s intentions because he goes out of his way to teach Shane about the benefits of living a normal life. He discusses the value of land, community, and having a woman to wait for. Shane follows what he says closely, and it is only the trouble caused by Ryder that brings him back into his past ways. Without Ryder’s trespasses, he may have never dueled again…
In the last scene when Joey is trying to convince Shane to stay, Joey questions Shane about why he has to leave. Shane says something to the effect of “you can’t escape what you are.” In this admittedly loose quotation of this film lies the reason he absolutely had to go. Shane believes that it is his destiny, his fate to be a gunfighter. He has a more deterministic view of the universe than is supremely common in the modern world, and as a result of this he thinks that one can try to escape your fate, but it is unlikely they ever will. He was making huge strides towards living a normal life and ‘fate’ ripped that all away from him. Yes, he heroically did the right thing for the Starrets and he saved the community of small farmers, but the movie is about more than that. Even someone who can duel and fight as well as Shane cannot beat destiny, and when Joey grows older, he may come to this realization too.
You bring up a lot of interesting points about this movie. I agree with a lot of what you say in your last paragraph, yet I am not sure I can wholeheartedly get on board with the idea that you cannot escape your past. It is interesting to see how close Shane comes, and I especially liked the point you made about Joe noticing as well. Admittedly, I do feel like it would be hard for Shane to stick around after he killed those people, as heroic as it was. It is probably hard for him to live with those deeds anyways.
Do you fully agree with Shane when he says you can’t escape your fate? I think at the very least that idea seems to contradict much of the mission of homesteaders, American settlers, and overall American ideologies associated with that time period. Also, even though Shane sacrifices his newfound life, it is evident he does this so little Joey and the Starretts can keep what he gave up. Even though Shane believes he cannot chose his fate himself, he knows some people can, because he wants the Staretts to do so.
It is interesting new viewers miss many of those classic gunfighter cues you talk about. I also feel like it is worth noting that Shane isn’t exactly like most other popular gunfighting characters, because he is much more mild mannered and wanting to stay out of trouble. It seems as if most of the heroes of that genre are much more “Han Solo-y”, meaning quick thinking, abrasive, and not afraid of trouble. I think Shane’s strong morals is part of the reason the movie is unique and we are still watching it long after it was made.
I definitely see your argument regarding whether or not Shane can accept his fate or not. If he can’t choose his action, path, mission, or whatever you want to call it, that would fly in the face of the homesteaders’ mission and the prevailing ideologies of the time the movie took place, the time the movie was produced, and right now.
In the last paragraph of your comment on my comment, you say that Shane is not ‘Han Solo-y’ and that he is mild-mannered, has strong morals, etc. All of those characteristics should lead him away from his fate if he really has some say in the matter. But I want to respectfully push back on your description of Shane as a character in some ways. He did physically attack someone, fight a group of people, and kill 3 men. He was moral in some ways, mild-mannered in some ways, but certainly not in all ways.
I personally have not made a decision on whether I agree with Shane that “you can’t escape your fate.” However, I am familiar with the arguments on both sides. I’m going to present the argument for the fate/universe perspective.
Fate argument
Shane is how he is. From the time he was a little kid his personality began to shape into that of someone who would become a gunfighter. Maybe he was more aggressive than other kids, maybe he was more perceptive, maybe he was more daring, bold, brave, and reckless. The first time he picked up a gun he likely shot straight, and I bet he also always excelled in games and activities where reaction time was a factor (like racing his friends on foot.) Throughout his childhood, a positive reinforcement cycle ensued; because he had the personality of the gunfighter, people interacted with him and events happened to him that only reinforced the characteristics that would unknowingly lead him to gunfighting. Notice how throughout this process, Shane hasn’t really chosen anything. Its almost as if he was just born to be a gunfighter, the universe wants him to be a gunfighter, it is his fate to become a gunfighter.
There must have been some event that lead him in the gunfighting direction. Maybe he met a gunfighter who became his role model. Perhaps he was bullied and made to gunfight another teenager and Shane absolutely demolished his opponent. Whatever the case may be, the important element is this. As soon as he tried it, he realized that it was perfect for him. The first day Shane lived the gunslinging life, he knew this was where he was meant to be. Everything in his life, how he came out of the womb, how he spent his leisure time as a child, his social interactions with family/friends/neighbors, was leading him to this. Without even knowing it, he had spent his entire life preparing to be a gunfighter. This explains why, when he finally became one, he was fantastic at it.
The movie clearly displays Shane’s skill. First of all, he is well into middle age for that period of American life and he is still alive and not crippled. However many dozens or even hundreds of duels he has been in, he has won them all. He is also highly skilled in hand to hand combat, successfully fighting many men simultaneously. His gunfighting is so developed, he beats the hired gun, even though he had been out of practice for a while.
I need to address a premise of my argument before I proceed further. In this version of the story, the universe has agency. It can choose what it wants, and impact people’s lives and events to accomplish that. In some versions of this argument, humans maintain their free will. In other versions, they don’t.
The universe wants Shane to be a gunfighter. That’s why he was born the way he was, with his intangible nature haveing been perfectly primed to get him to develop into a fantastic gunfighter. The universe wasn’t happy when he decided to leave the life. Shane could have wound up at any homestead or farm on his journey, but as chance would have it, he met the Starrets, a generous family in need of a farmhand and embroiled in an economic conflict that both pits good against evil and is escalating towards violence. Yes, Shane chose to help them all out. He chose to pick up his gun and go after Ryder. Those were decisions he personally and consciously made. But the critical element is, in that situation, there was no other choice he could make. I believe Shane is a moral man which means that choosing to not help the Staretts would be nearly impossible for him to do.
Think about what made pushed him into the situation of meeting the Starrets. If his horse had been slightly younger and ran at a slightly slower or faster pace that day, he would have been somewhere else. The change in the horse’s speed would have changed every day he traveled on the trip, so if we manipulated that variable Shane might have missed the entire community. There are infinite more examples of this. All throughout Shane’s life, if something had been just slightly slightly different, he would have never arrived where he did when he did that put him in the perfect situation to go back to “doing his fate.” But nothing was different. The probability of everything happening this way was infinitesimally small, but it happened none the less. This argument concludes with the point that things only happened this way because the universe/fate made it happen.
This definitely seems like a raw deal for Shane. His agency is largely lost, his life is largely planned, and he cant have everything in life that he might want. But there is one overwhelming positive here; Shane was the only one who could have saved the Starrets and the other homesteaders. Without him, Ryker would have probably killed Joe and little Joey would have grown up without a father. Whether its fate, the universe, karma, or God, some force wanted good to prevail against evil. Shane was simply a means to an end.
If you want to keep discussing this respond with what you think! I’d like to hear what you think the counter-argument is to the “fate/universe arg” and how that applies to the movie.
In the case of the movie, it really does seem like they are trying to say Shane must follow his fate. It is really hard to disagree with anything you say in your argument, however, I do have a counter argument.
I believe that thousands of small choices could have lead Shane to do what he did, instead of the universe’s grand plan. Shane probably was skilled from a young age, but Shane had to choose to pick up the gun, and continue picking it up. Many small things probably lead him to enjoying gunfighting, but he chose to kill some of the men he killed. It is entirely possible that many decisions he made in his life led to him going after Ryker, and even though it felt like the moral choice, in the end it still was his choice to make, and that is the important thing. Also, he got to chose to leave after he killed. Was it his fate to go, or could he have changed it by choosing to make a life for himself even after the events?
Also, about free will, do you subscribe to the free will or the not free will side of the argument, and why?
Your argument and specifically the comment saying “I believe Shane is a moral man” so of course he helped the Starets out raises another question: are you morally obligated to use your talents to help whenever you can? In this case, Shane is a skilled gunfighter, and possibly the only person who could beat Ryker. Furthermore, Shane doesn’t have a family, so he has less to lose in a gunfight than Joe does. He seems like the perfect candidate to go after Ryker, but does that mean he should, in order to be a “moral man”? It seems the movie sets it up for the audience to believe so, but in a more general sense, to what extent should everyone look to use their talents to better the world? If you are a great lawyer, are you in any way obligated to use your skill to defend innocent people or a cause you care about instead of a company you may work for? If you are naturally good at science, should you use that talent to spend the rest of your life trying to cure diseases? It obviously is more complicated than this, and real life is made up of thousands of little choices instead of a few big ones, but I’d love to hear what you think.
I think that the universe argument does not circumvent free will in the way you describe it. I completely agree with you that Shane made “thousands of small choices” that could have lead him to do what he did instead of the universe’s plan.
I am willing to grant that some choices we make are less important in the grand scheme of the universe’s plans for us than others, so what I’m about to say does not hold true for literally every decision. But for the significant ones, like Shane choosing to fight in Joe’s place, the key element is that he had a choice, but what other choice did he have except for helping?
I think he is a moral man, but even if he wasn’t the universe still wants him to act morally. He was put in this specific situation to choose whether or not to be the savior the Starretts needed. The universe knows Shane(somehow) so even though he has a choice in the matter the universe knows exactly what he will choose.
As to whether it was his fate to leave, maybe. As a gunfighter, Shane has likely not lived the most moral life and has hurt and killed people many times before. However, no one can deny that Shane still has a good heart. Perhaps this is the universe’s punishment/reward for him. He will never be allowed to settle down as a punishment for his actions/wrongs/sins. Remember, at the beginning, he chose to make a life for himself and was only stopped because of intervening circumstances that required him to make a sacrifice: he exchanged settling down at the homestead with helping the people that he loved. Or all of this could be true but it is not a punishment, its just his fate to be a gunfighter so that he can kill people who seek to take advantage of the weak.
Right now I am between the two arguments but leaning heavily towards the free will side. I have been a free will absolutist since I first learned what that term meant, but in the last year, I have become more open to at least some degree of the universe argument. I have even seen one or two things that were so coincidental that its infinitesimally probable that they just happened on their own accord.
I do believe that those with talents have an obligation to use them for the good of others, but thats only because I subscribe to the moral/religious worldview that Huntingdon talks about as distinguishing the American people from the rest of the world. The American people, one of the most biblical societies in the world, viewed their coming to the new world as a parallel to the Exodus. The chief parallels, in my opinion, are twofold. First, the famous line “Pharoah, let my people go” has an ending that is commonly ignored in popular culture. The full text is “Pharoah, let my people go, so they may worship me (Adoni, God) in the desert.” The Anglo-Americans left their country to do God’s will. The second parallel is when the Jews are given the Law by God on mount Sinia. Their adherence to these principles are what distinguishes them from the nations that occupy the promised land, whos wicked ways God despises. The fate of the Israelites is directly tied to their adherence to the law. When they obey, God hands their enemies over to them in battle; when they don’t, their lands are taken, their people are enslaved, and many other misfortunes befall them. (see first and second Kings, and first and second Chronicles for numerous examples)
According to their moral worldview and by extension the worldview of the early Americans, yes, there is an obligation to use one’s powers to help others. But according to other perspectives, that may not be the case.
How do you think the characters in the film stick with or deviate from the idea of American culture that we have learned about so far? I would love to hear your thoughts on this question and other Shane related discussion.
I really see what you’re saying and enjoy the points you made. So in this worldview, do you think the future is written, and there is nothing anyone can do to change it? I think it almost seems like the future in unwitting, but the universe pushes it a certain direction. The universe presents a choice to Shane, and it knows everything in his life up to that point is preparing and pushing him to make the moral choice. However, Shane can still choose to make the immoral choice. He just won’t, because his genetics, past experiences, and everything else about him made him a moral man. Maybe there is 1/1000 times he will choose to stay in town and do nothing, but maybe he is compelled to make the same choice 100 percent of the time, I am not sure.
I don’t think I really believe in karma in a spiritual sense, but I do agree with what you are saying about the universes punishment and reward system. I don’t really feel like there is an a force punishing people for good and rewarding them for bad on earth, but it makes logical sense that if you killed people at some point in your life, it may come back to haunt you. In Shane’s case, it comes back in the form of an inability to leave behind his gunfighting ways. Some killers or immoral people may be able to escape their immoral deeds coming back to haunt them, but this is because they get lucky. Also, someone who didn’t have a past with gunfighting in Shane’s position at the beginning of the story wouldn’t have been put in the position to leave by the end. I think this concept applies to even small deeds, for example, if you’re nice to a lot of people, it is likely that some will be extra nice back to you.
I think I also fall somewhere between the two arguments personally. Furthermore, if free will in fact does not exist, it is not productive in any way to act as though it doesn’t. It wouldn’t change any lives, and it is still in everyone’s best interest to try and make good choices, instead of just following what they think the universe wants for them. If no one believed in free will, I think people would stop fighting the battle of good and evil on every level. It is still worth it to fight the good fight for what you want and think is right, even if everything in the world is telling you you’ll lose.
I think Shane falls somewhere in the middle in following the world view of early Americas, especially in the way Huntington describes it. He obviously does believe that it is important to use your talents for the good of others, as he sacrifices everything to do this. There are some parallels to be drawn between Shane and early settlers, but they are thin: Shane is trying to find freedom from his past, and so are early settlers in a way. Still, I could be wrong, but Shane doesn’t strike me as as full blown religious as the settlers were. He seems to share some values with early settlers, but isn’t exactly an embodiment of them. I’d love to hear what you think on this topic.
I think these concepts we are discussing and the question of whether Shane had a choice can also be applied to the ending of All the Pretty Horses. I thought the ending of these stories were pretty similar. Do you think John Grady Cole was similarly pushed by the universe to ride off into the distance, leaving behind his old life for good? I would argue yes, but would love to hear if you agree, disagree, or have anything more to say about the discussion in general.
I think that, while Shane may not conform to the characteristics of the early American settlers, he certainly embodies many principles of the American Creed. He is independent, individualistic, has an astounding sense of duty, respects the dignity of his fellow man, and so on. Huntington writes about a scholar who says a key feature of America is ‘protestantism without God.’ Our politically liberal society is based on fundamental Judeo-Christian precepts even though there is no requirement that you actually believe in God. The expectations for moral behavior that we hold ourselves and society (imperfectly of course) are Judeo-Christian in nature whether or not we recognize them as such. I think Shane is a perfect example of this. I agree with you that he does not appear particularly religious, but he acts as if he is a God fearing person. He is willing to put his life on the line for what is right and good for example.
John Grady Cole and Shane are similar in this sense, that they live as if they are religious even through the text/film leaves us no strong reason to believe that they are. Both are so highly committed to their values that they are willing to risk their lives for them. John Grady Cole does this when he refuses to lie to convict Blevins and as a result is sent to prison and almost murdered. I would argue that both characters are similar to the early settlers in the most important way: that they are acting for God. Shane and John Grady Cole have had their character shaped in the American moral atmosphere which was not and is not too dissimilar from that of the early American settlers. Yes, there have been dramatic changes overtime, but the fundamental pillars still hold true. Thus, their personal convictions cause them to act in a way that conforms with God’s laws and carries out his will.
As for John Grady Cole riding off into the distance being pushed by the universe, I am not sure about this one. Operating within the analytical framework we have already established, John Grady Cole seems to have spent his life building good karma, so the universe should be on his side at the moment. I think you make a good point that the endings were similar because both characters left because of some belief that was so fundamental to them that it left them with no other choice. For Cole, that was his love for the American Frontier life style, for Shane, that would be his belief in destiny and fate.
It’s certainly possible that the universe has something grand intended for John Grady Cole that necessitates him continuing down this path now. If so, that was successful because he is well on his way. I do not think we have seen enough of Cole’s life play out to know whether this is some serious universe business; we know Shane so well at a later point in his life when his destiny is more set that the universe’s potential agency is much more clear.
What do you think about the Universe’s potential intention for John Grady Cole? Do you think any plot points in the novel seemed to hint that fate had a role in things? If there are any other connections between Shane and John Grady Cole that you think are relevant to this discussion, I’d love to hear those aswell.
I think that there are many connections John Grady Cole and Shane, and that John Grady Cole might even look like somewhat of a young Shane. I do think there was almost the same amount of the universe involvement with John Grady Cole and Shane.
I don’t know how much of this is “universe” and who much of this is just unfortunate circumstances, but John Grady Cole does not get to make many choices for himself. He doesn’t really want to leave his ranch, he has to, because his mom was leaving. He doesn’t want to go to jail, he has to, because his travel companion steals his horse back. He doesn’t want to leave Mexico without Alejandra, but he has to let her go, because of her family and his situation.
However he does make a few important choices that characterize the rest of the plot of the novel for him. He chooses to go to Mexico, and while he probably had to leave, eh did;t have to go to such a lawless land. He chooses to have a relationship with Alejandra, even though it is against the rules. He chooses not to leave Blevins behind, even though it is arguably the smart thing to do. He makes a lot of “morally correct” choices, and the universe doesn’t seem to give him good fortune in return. However, he gets punished for the choice he made with Alejandra with heartbreak.
I wonder how morally correct it is to break the rules for love is, and John Grady Cole does. Some would argue that love is a noble thing to make sacrifices and break rule for, so he did do the morally right thing, even if it didn’t turn out for him. However, he was being selfish in some ways, and did disrespect Alejandra’s father. Alejandra had some fault in this as well, but setting that aside, is love a pure motivation? Is it morally ok to do questionable things for the sake of love?
In the end, it may be the universe’s will, or it may just be chance, but I do not think John Grady Cole had much say in what happened to him on his adventure throughout the novel. However, the choices he did make did guide a lot of the plot. I think this means the life ends up throwing things at people, and a lot of these things will be hard to deal with, but making “morally good” choices for the most part can increase your chances of the universe rewarding you in some kind of way. If you make a lot of morally bad choices, the likely hood of these choices coming back to bite you also increases. The universe probably controls a lot of your life, some of it seemingly random, but some of it based on your choices and character. Whether this is because of some sort of higher power or force, or just up to chance and science, I don;t know. In the end, I feel like John Grady Cole, much like Shane, had to leave his home. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter, or anything else related to this topic.
I think you are right that John Grady Cole had to leave his ranch because of economic reasons, but there was no reason that he had to choose to go to Mexico. The Mexican official who interrogated him made it clear that he would have expected a much higher salary as a ranch hand in the United States than in Mexico. A lot of the ‘unfortunate situations’ that you have labeled directly result from John Grady Cole’s choices. He went to prison because he chose not to lie about Blevins. He lost Alejandra, but only because he chose to violate the social hierarchy and pursue her.
I think John Grady Cole was not aware enough of the results these actions would have. It is unclear how much he knew about Mexico before setting off, but had he understood the culture there, he may have known that prisons were places of constant life or death combat and taking a girl’s virginity out of wedlock would cause her father to try and kill you.
I am on the fence about how to morally consider love and how it weighs into the universe’s calculations. In this particular instance, I think that it was moral to break the rules for love because the rules that constrained Alejandra were largely immoral. She as a person was deprived of a large part of her will and agency by not being able to pursue the man she had feelings for, and this can be seen as an immoral and sexist suppression of her freedom.
Having this position does not weigh in on whether her loving John Grady Cole was moral. It doesn’t take a religious fundamentalist to recognize that what they were doing was certainly shortsighted and naive, especially considering there was no birth control available to them. Neither of them were in the position to raise and support a family at that point, and one might even argue that Alejandra should have taken her family’s wishes into considerations from a purely practical standpoint; she would not be able to rely on them for support if she got pregnant simply because they would disapprove.
John Grady Cole may be most notable for pushing back against ‘Mexican culture’ while he was there. That is why he kept choosing things that had such negative results. The key then to answering many questions is whether the universe prefers people to act on American principles as John Grady Cole does or on Mexican principles as Don Hector, the prison boss, and Alehandra’s aunt do. This could be a long shot, but perhaps the reason John Grady Cole is inclined to send himself on this adventure is to expose to the reader the flaws with how the Mexican practices exemplified by the characters.
What do you think about this long-shot argument? Is there a way this ties in with any of the other readings or movies that we have watched for class? I would love to hear your thoughts on these questions or other matters that relate.