One of the most obvious themes of Shane is the tension between the fence-favoring homesteaders and the open-range cattle man Luke Fletcher. In the book, the homesteaders are shown as the small-time operators threatened by a powerful, wealthy man with a large herd of cattle and a government beef contract. In later years, author Jack Schaefer would regret this aspect of his novel, that Shane was, "aiding the advance of settlement, giving his push to the accelerating onrush of the very civilization I find deserving contempt."[4]
On a personal level, the story deals with a man's attempt to leave behind a violent past and the decisions he must take when the homesteaders who have befriended him are faced with danger beyond their experience.[6]
The story, seen through the eyes of a young boy, is also a coming of age story. The boy is puzzled by Shane and his hidden violence, who is beyond his sheltered experience, but comes to trust, love, and venerate him.[7] Times book editor Jack Miles wrote that “What makes ‘Shane’ different, what makes it a classic among Westerns, is that it is a story told by a boy. Schaefer understood...that the Western is an American boy's dream of the world as it should be.”[8]
Shane also demonstrates Schaefer’s strong focus on the social bonds between men, as in the scene when Shane and Joe Starrett uproot an old tree stump. The section ends, “an old stump on its side with root ends making a strange pattern against the glow of the sun sinking behind the far mountains and two men looking over it into each other’s eyes.”[9]
