Do We Need Shane?

The book is (presumably rather obviously) Shane by Jack Schaefer. You know it is good because the Library of America included it in their volume The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s and 1950s.

Want another sign of how good it is? I read it in a reading group with a set of students; they thoroughly enjoyed it. Who knew the Western still had that something that appeals?

The tale is told by Bob, a young boy living with his parents, Joe and Marian Starrett. Everyone in the book towers over Bob; everything and everyone in this story is larger than life. Joe and Marian are quintessential salt of the earth types, the sort of people around whom you build a civilization. You want Joe and Marian Starrett living in your town, or even better, in your family. Hard-working, determined, and good. They know right from wrong, that nothing comes for free, and that showing kindness to a stranger is just a thing you do.

But, Joe and Marian are no match for Evil. Luke Fletcher is Evil; a rancher who is perfectly willing to resort to cruel ways to drive the good and noble settlers away from his territory. You want Joe and Marian to win, but you know that they are no match for the Fletchers of this world. You want good to triumph, but good just is not as strong as evil.

Enter Shane, literally riding into the story from nowhere. (The original title of the story: Rider from Nowhere.) No background, no history, no origin story. He is just there one day. In the Clint Eastwood movie Pale Rider, a rather loose retelling of Shane, the man form nowhere is a literal ghost, the pale rider from Revelation. Shane is a real man but Eastwood captured an ineffable quality of Shane; he is real and unreal at the same time.

By the end of the first chapter of the novel, we get this description of Shane:

“I like him.” Mother’s voice was serious. “He’s so nice and polite and sort of gentle. Not like most men I’ve met out here. But there’s something about him. Something underneath the gentleness…Something…” Her voice trailed away.
“Mysterious?” suggested father.
“Yes, of course. Mysterious. But more than that. Dangerous.”
“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 be a curious thing. “In fact, I don’t think you ever had a safer man in your house.”

There we have the central tension of the novel. To build civilization on the frontier, do we need Shane, the most dangerous and the most safe man you could ever find? We like to think that the Joes and Marians are the foundation of civil society. We like to think that all Bob needs to grow up in a civilized world is to have it filled with Joes and Marians. But what if the forces of anarchy are more powerful than the forces of civilization?

Do we need Shane? Shane will never be a part of civilization. He rides in, beats back evil, and rides out. He doesn’t stay to reap the rewards of gratitude. You know he will never settle down with a wife and child of his own; he is forever on the move, arriving with the sunrise, doing what needs to be done, and riding off into the sunset. What is the reward to Shane for doing what he does? What motivates someone like Shane? We have absolutely no idea. He has his code; he does what is right; he moves on.

Do we need Shane? We obviously need Joe and Marian. We want Bob raised by Joe and Marian, not by Shane. We want Bob to grow up to be like his parents. Bob is fascinated, as only a child can be, with the idea of Shane. The ending of the Alan Ladd move version nails this fact with Bob screaming into the vast open lands at the back of Shane riding into the distance, “Shane, come back.” (As an aside, the comparable scene in Eastwood’s Pale Rider is painful beyond belief. Eastwood really whiffed there.) Yet despite the allure of Shane to Bob, Joe, Marian and the Reader, we all know that Shane has to ride on, that civilization is not built on the back of Shane.

Do we need Shane? Is it important to raise up a new generation of Shanes? Should we teach children that while we want most of them to grow up to be Joe and Marian, we hope a few of them become Shane? Do we teach them to ride through the land, taking on the tasks of beating back the forces of anarchy and evil and then riding on without waiting for gratitude or rewards, to never settle down and enjoy the benefits of what has been done? Do we need to train up people to be dangerous to evil, but completely safe to the good? How do we raise people to be like that?

Do we need Shane? Oddly, we probably do. But I cannot see any way to guarantee that Shane will be there when he is needed. Maybe that is the point. When the need arises, Shane will arrive. Or at least we hope that Shane will arrive. The Shanes of the world do not announce their existence or even their arrival. They don’t stick around afterwards for the party. Maybe you never even notice they were there.

Curiously, now that I am writing this, it reminds me of this:

“And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” (ESV)

The Holy Spirit as Shane. Hmm. “’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 be a curious thing. ‘In fact, I don’t think you ever had a safer man in your house.’” Hmm. I guess we do need Shane.

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