The surface plot of Shane is rather typical of the western story: the conflict between cattleman and homesteader, leading inevitably to a fiery showdown, has become a kind of permanent American myth. But Shane upsets some expectations about this myth by altering its usual outline. In classical mythology, for example, the hero is called out of a static, settled environment at the beginning of the story and embarks on his great adventure. In Shane, though, the already heroic gunfighter continually tries to regain a settled existence by identifying with the Starretts; only at the end of the book does he find that he can never fit in with the farming life and that he must reassume his discarded role of gunman and deliverer.

Early reviewers sought to compare Schaefer's novel to the works of such western writers as Owen Wister (especially his The Virginian [1902]), Mary Hallock...