The Danger
One of the first observations about Shane made by Marian Starrett is agreeing with her husband’s characterization of him as mysterious which she follows up with “dangerous.” In a strange and unexpected reply, her husband agrees, laughs and then notes that though he may be dangerous in fact, he’s not dangerous to them. This is the first of a recurrence of imagery in which others imply that Shane may become a threat to the happy marriage of the Starretts; an inference not shared by Joe. The imagery here is more than merely suggestive; in a way Marian is already married to Shane. Bob’s narration will weave this imagery together to imply that Shane is a part of Joe who arrives when needed and exits when that need no longer exists. On a very fragile and highly symbolic level, this imagery serves to imply that Shane is the literal human incarnation of the danger which Joe Starrett cannot exhibit in his role as husband, father and figurehead of the taming of the frontier.
The Stump and the Post
Taken separately, the stump which Shane and Joe work together to uproot and the post which Joe alone unsuccessfully attempts to uproot at the novel’s close work as distinct and individual symbols. Notably, however, when they are considered in tandem together, they serve a different purse the first and last stitch in another weaving of imagery. The defeat of the stump by the men and the defeat of the man by the post represent the completion of a necessary cycle to civilizing untamed wilderness. The short-lived presence of the stump represents the power of the natural world which must be tamed while the resiliency of the post represents the end of the middle period of lawlessness and the arrival civilization. Between the stump and the post are myriad images which serve to implicate this theme.
"He's not gone."
The last words of his father that Bob shares with the reader reference Shane after he has disappeared on horseback into the sunset:
“He’s not gone. He’s here, in this place, in this place he gave us. He’s all around us and in us, and he always will be.”
Many critics and academics have used this quote to lend credence to a symbolic interpretation of Shane as a Christ figure. There is another perhaps even more breathtaking way to construe the meaning of Joe’s final words on the matter, especially in consideration of the decision by the author to tell the story through the eyes of narrator who may not be the most reliable choice that could have been made. The very same words that link what most believe to have been a deadly gunslinger in his past to Christ could also be used to argue that the child narrator has invented Shane as a symbolic personification that never actually existed in the flesh. This interpretation also links back to the imagery hinting at the threat of Shane perceived by others, but denied by Joe without hesitation at every turn.
Could it be that Bob Starrett is writing a story about the emotional devastation of watching the part of his father he never could have imagined existed was forced into being when pushed to his last exhausted confidence in the American dream of equality for every man? This interpretation of the imagery inherent in his father’s last words about Shane would take the murderous avenger of justice out of the realm of the sacred and situate him directly within the sphere of the profane: Shane is the unleashing of the absolute darkest interior of Joe Starrett who came to life and then disappeared again as necessary, but whom Bob now realizes is always going to be there. To paraphrase a somewhat similar pop culture icon: Shane IS the danger, but Joe is the one who knocks!
“Your killing days are done.”
Shane’s inexorable showdown with his direct counterpart, Wilson, is framed as mythic imagery. Before he offers up this seemingly overconfident prediction of the man’s future, Shane warns the gunslinger that what he wants and what he is going to get are two different things. He doesn’t add “now” but the unspoken word lingers in the aura of that confidence. Wilson, not realizing he chose a life doomed to obsolescence no matter how long he managed to survive, takes it personally. He simply does not get it. Shane—most likely not much different from Wilson in earlier days—got it a long time ago and made the decision to outlive obsolescence no matter how short life may turn out to be. The imagery presented in Shane’s unheeded warning is far bigger than a personal taunt to Wilson. It is the imagery of a period, an era, an entire way of life that is done and gone and never to return.
