Jack Schaefer's Novel Shane

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.