The film Shane is about a lone cowboy, Shane, who is traveling through the Wyoming territory when he comes across a small family of homesteaders. After some initial awkward introductions, Shane sympathizes with the homesteaders and agrees to work as a farmhand for the family in exchange for food and a place to lay his head. Shane quickly becomes aware of an ongoing problem for the homesteaders, where Ryker, a powerful neighboring landowner, has been working towards systematically pushing out homesteaders across Wyoming in order to expand his territory. Shane and the father of the household, Joe Starrett, form a unique friendship over the work they are doing and Shane quickly bonds with the entire family. On one of his runs into town to pick up supplies for the family, he has a violent encounter with Ryker’s men. While no guns were drawn, the conflict was escalated as Ryker stated the next fight would be deadly. Ryker hires a highly experienced gunman to deal with the problem of Shane and Starrett. Ryker invites them into an ambush at the saloon, which the family is tipped off about by one of Ryker’s former men. After fighting about who should go into town to confront Ryker at the saloon, Shane ultimately prevails and goes to the saloon alone, but he is trailed by Starrett’s young son, Joey. After some provocative discussion in the saloon with Ryker and his hitman, Shane draws his gun and fires, killing both Ryker and the hired gun. A third assailant is positioned upstairs and would have taken out Shane, had Joey not shouted to warn him. Shane kills the shooter, but is wounded in the altercation. After a brief discussion with Joey telling him to return home to his mother and father explaining that everything was going to be okay, Shane rides off into the sunset, with Joey pleading with him to come back as the scene fades out.
2 replies on “Shane ERA”
This is a good summary of the movie, as you do a great job of describing Shane’s journey. My favorite part of the movie was probably the relationship between Shane and the Starrets family, more particularly, his relationship with the son Joey who idolizes Shane. Additionally, I found the ending of the movie to be interesting as Shane rides off with Joey calling to him, and therefore, made me curious about what others thought of it. Did you enjoy the ending of the movie, or did you think it should have ended differently?
Personally, I thought the ending was perfect in regards to field of western movies. A climax in the movie was reached, but the image of the mysterious, upstanding cowboy was still maintained. Shane entered the life of the Starrets and did good by them, as any true hero in a Western film would. After defeating the Rykers, Shane had served his purpose for the family and needed to keep riding on, as cowboys do. Like most people on that were on the frontier in general, Shane was not sedentary, but instead lived his life roaming around, doing good wherever possible.