A Star Called Henry

Before Michael Collins gifts him a paper birth certificate on his wedding day, Henry considers his father’s wooden leg “his birth cert” (70): the only artifact that binds him to the disappeared parent, who would never call him by his given name. The leg is a motif that connects father and son, although they are apart for the greater part of the novel.

One-legged Henry Smart uses his prosthetic wooden leg as both a crutch and a club to floor his enemies before he sticks a knife into them. Although the wooden leg compensates for Henry Smart’s physical defect, it also becomes a proud and comforting marker of his presence for the younger Henry, who longs to hear “the wood of my father’s feet” after one of his long absences (54).

Henry, who takes the leg on his adventures both in the Easter Rising and later as a Fenian, uses it as both a weapon and a reminder of who he is. When Henry is shot and injures his leg, Miss O’Shea helps him attach his father’s wooden leg as a support. They find that it fits him “like a glove” (277). Although Henry recovers and goes back to using the wooden leg as merely a relic and a weapon, wearing it changes him; when

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