Shane (Book Review)

The 1949 book Shane is probably the most influential Western book of all time, with its 1954 film elevating the story into pop culture status. The image of a mysterious rider appearing one day in a violent town, scaring its inhabitants, before eventually protecting and fighting for those who couldn't defend themselves, became the undying image of a gunslinging Western hero; influencing other mysterious but altruistic heroes in other stories and genres. Yet, the origins and creation of Shane is equally as inspiring.

Jack Schaefer wrote Shane during the Golden Age of Westerns, a time when heroic cowboys reigned supreme in books, comics, movies, and television shows. Initially titled Rider from Nowhere and serialized in Argosy, the story was soon published in novel form, before becoming popular enough to be made into a feature film. Not all Western stories, though, were written as purely fiction. Some were inspired by real-life events that happened in the previous century. Schaefer was inspired by the historical range war, the Johnson County War, which happened in Wyoming between 1889-1893. It was fought between a corporation of rich ranchers against smaller independent settlers, which soon involved the United States Cavalry. The war claimed the lives of at least 20 people, possibly more.

Shaefer, though a popular novelist in his time, seldom talked about himself or his books. However, as seen in his works and a few interviews, he was a man who wrote about the courage of the common folk. As such, Shane was written with a focus on the struggles and triumphs of the independent settlers. There is information circulating in the web that Schaefer supposedly rescinded the idea, stating that the "settlers destroyed America." But there has been no documentation or primary source to support this. Even though other of his books became beloved and adapted, Shane was undoubtedly his most famous work.

Many literarians suggest that Schaefer wrote the book as an antithesis to the 1902 novel The Virginian, written by Owen Wister, which also tackled the Johnson County War. Wister lived in that era, but as a wealthy man himself, sided with the rich ranchers. The Virginian espoused the notion that it was justifiable, and even honorable, to use vigilante justice and murder to protect property. The protagonist, the titular Virginian, was loud, rugged, and an ideological cowboy. In contrast, Schaefer sided with the smaller settlers, and wrote the protagonist, Shane, as a quiet, stoic, and humble gunfighter.

It is also unknown who was the inspiration behind the character of Shane, although historians have a couple of candidates, namely Jim Roberts and Clay Allison. Both lived violent lives as gunfighters of the Old West. Both arrived in towns ravaged by range wars, namely the Pleasant Valley War and the Colfax County War. And both ended up helping the poor underdogs of these conflicts, with Allison even killing one of the hired guns of the rich ranchers, similar to Shane. These, however, still remain assumptions. Nonetheless, the hardships these people faced back then still resonate in Schaefer's time and even today.

Of all Western books in history, Shane by far is the one that stood the test of time. It inspired many from Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider to Nobuhiro Watsuki's Rurouni Kenshin.