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Jay Bushey
ENGL113MI
Professor Alan Liu
Spring 2015
The Man With Wooden Legs: A New Critical Close Reading
Opening with a series of deeply personal questions, The Man With Wooden Legs1 by
From Indian Lakes immediately presents itself as a disorienting work. When was I alive? /
Could it be sleep is all I know? / How could I have made mistakes? / Is there something more for
me to learn? These questions, which establish the foundation of the song from which all the rest
of its meaning is derived, are never answered within the work. It would seem that, in order to
reach a complete understanding of the songs meaning, one would either need to be the artist
posing the questions, or the omniscient God who alone could resolve such queries. We, however,
are limited to our own respective psychologies and the work itself as a self-contained object. In
this regard, we could never articulate the complete meaning of the song, however, this is not
inherently problematicThe function of the objective critic is by approximate descriptions of
poems, or multiple restatements of their meaning, to aid other readers to come to an intuitive and
full realization of poems themselves Criticism of poetry is like [the square root of two]... or
[pi]..., not all it would be, yet all that can be had and very useful.2 With this approach in mind, I
will not attempt to address every point of significance within The Man With Wooden Legs. I
will instead carefully analyze the songs content and form to reach its most central ideathat

1 From Indian Lakes. The Man With Wooden Legs. The Man With Wooden Legs. 2009. CD.
[All quotations refer to lyrics from this song, unless otherwise noted.]
2 Wimsatt, W.K. The Concrete Universal. From The Verbal Icon. p. 83.

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one can remain ignorant of their own agency for only so long before they must accept their
personal responsibility in the world, and through this become an adult.
To begin an analysis of The Man With Wooden Legs, it would be detrimental to
presume any authorial intent. We quite simply cannot know what lead From Indian Lakes to
compose the song as they did, and so we must be like one who constructs the greater image of a
jigsaw puzzle by carefully connecting compatible pieces, rather than like a child who forces
incongruent pieces together out of a desire for swift progress. As Cleanth Brooks writes, The
meaning must issue from the particulars; it must not seem to be arbitrarily forced upon the
particulars.3 The first particular to consider is the opening question of the song: When was I
alive? It seems that an obvious answer to this question could be given in the form of a birth
date, yet the sad tone created by combining the guitarists use of a minor chord with the singers
soft falsetto suggest that the question touches upon something more meaningful which cannot be
resolved by such a trivial answer. The next line follows from this question, asking Could it be
sleep is all I know? Here, being alive is contrasted with sleeping. While one who is asleep is
alive in a biological sense, we intuitively understand that there is a difference between the two
statesnamely in regards to our agency. We do not hold a person responsible for the sins they
commit within their dreams, yet we demand justice for the wrongdoings of one who is conscious.
The singer seems averse to this fact, however, and asks in a childlike voice, How could I have
made mistakes? / Is there something more for me to learn? effectively removing himself from
responsibility by pleading ignorance.
There is then a break in the singing in which a ringing, alarm clock-like guitar riff stands
in the foreground of the music. Just as an alarm clock signals the proper time for a person to

3 Brooks, Cleanth. Irony as a principle of structure. p. 1.

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wake from sleep, this guitar part suggests that it is time for the singer to transition from his state
of unconscious ignorance to a wakeful understanding of his agency. Following this section,
however, the singer returns to the same questions he has just asked, and we see that, like a person
pressing the snooze button on an alarm, he is not yet ready to wake up. There is, however, an
important shift following these questions, as the singer now poses three new questions: And
will I ever make it back to you? / And will you still want me? / Have you been waiting for the
sound of my return? Here, it does not seem particularly important whom the you refers to
the importance lies in the singers recognition of someone other than himself. It seems that the
singer has recognized that his life can only be contextualized by a when? if there are lives
independent of his own; sleep cannot be all he knows if he recognizes someone beyond himself;
he can only have made mistakes or have more to learn if there is someone else to judge or to
teach him.
The alarm clock riff sounds once again and the singer, unaccompanied by music, states
Ill wait for your calling. Though his voice sounds tired, he is immediately met with a
powerful musical response, punctuated with heavy accents from the drums. This line is repeated
as the singer appears to become increasingly aggravated, doubling his sung statement with a
raspy shout. This section is performed as a call-and-responsea musical phrase in which the
first and often solo part is answered by a second and often ensemble part.4 Though the singer is
waiting for a calling, passively letting his next action be determined by another, he discovers that
he is the one calling out, actively looking for direction rather than being moved by something
outside of himself.

4 Merriam-Webster, call-and-response.

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The singers frustration with this realization culminates in the most strongly framed
section of the song. The guitars fade out leaving only a heavy drumbeat and the singers strained
shout: If I was ever an imperfect son, or a foolish boy, or a wretched child As he becomes
more critical of his mistakes, he distances his identity from his faultsas he goes from
understanding himself to be imperfect, then foolish, and finally wretched, he identifies
himself as a son, then a boy, and finally as a child, moving from a specific identity defined
by relationship to a general identity defined by age. The singer has now recognized his
responsibility for his past mistakes, but wishes to disassociate from them, and offers an excuse:
I was only out looking for Jesus / I was only becoming a Godly man! The singer seems to have
realized that, even though his mistakes were made with good intentions at heart (i.e. becoming a
Godly man), he is still responsible for the consequences.
The powerful instrumentation which follows gives way to another soft section in which
the singer places himself in the material world for the first time: Pace the floor, wooden legs
have never been so silent. Notice that, immediately preceding these vocals, there is an off-time
drum beat between the snare and the cymbal which has somewhat of a stumble effect, as if there
is a clumsiness to the singers first steps in the real world. Wooden legs suggests stiffness, like
that which occurs when a person first gets out of bed after a long sleep. Wooden legs are also
commonly associated with a table, chair, or desksomething which remains safely indoors and
waits to be used, much like the passive singer who has been waiting for a calling. It seems that
the singer himself is the man with wooden legs, but he is at least finally learning to walk. In
the next lines he begins to express a desire for that which is outside: And the wind outside the
window sounds like heaven before falling into regret, singing Before I was made, I was close
to perfection / And since I became Ive gone the wrong direction. Though the singer still desires

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to be free from responsibility or accountability (as he was before being born/made), he
recognizes and accepts his own agency in regard to the path that he has taken through life up to
this point.
Leading to the final section of the song, the instrumentation suggests internal conflict
before reaching resolve. The guitars and drums seem to be playing against one anotherthe
guitars accenting two counts while the drums accent three. The time signature also fluctuates
here, and this transition section cannot be counted in standard 4/4 meter, unlike the rest of the
song.5 As this conflict resolves, the rolling snare drum and pulsing guitar riffs build into the
singers conclusion: The lies Ive told, the hearts Ive stolen Here, the singer finally admits
to his most troubling of sinsbeing deceitful and emotionally thieving with those whom he
pretended to genuinely care for. He recognizes his selfish actions as his own.
The singers following question, How could I pretend to love for so long? is not unlike
the earlier question, How could I have made mistakes? in its form, however, the two cannot be
interpreted in the same mannerthe singer has fundamentally changed his perspective at this
point in the song, and his present voice, firm and assertive, stands in sharp contrast to the
childish voice that begged for answers in the beginning of the song. Like Cleanth Brooks noted
in one of his poetic analyses, Here a complete reversal of meaning is effected: effected by the
context, and pointed, probably, by the tone of voice.6 How could I pretend to love for so long?
is a genuine questionhe truly does not understand how he could have held up a faade of
innocence until this point, and the final lines express deep remorse for this fact: Oh God, Im a
terrible mess today! / My God, Im becoming a monster! These vocals, however, are not
5 There are exceptions to this, technically speaking, but only in regards to where the other
musical phrases end, and not the time signature itself.
6 Brooks, Cleanth. Irony as a principle of structure. p. 2.

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performed by the singer, but by a group of other voiceswe are presented with other wretched
children who have similarly begun to understand their agency and personal responsibility, and
see that all people must come to this realization while coming of age. The singer may be alone in
his personal responsibility, but he is not alone in this world. We see that the whole song has told
the story of a boy becoming a man, and accepting, however begrudgingly, the responsibility that
this new identity entails.

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Lyrics to The Man With Wooden Legs

When was I alive?
Could it be sleep is all I know?
How could I have made mistakes?
Is there something more for me to learn?
When was I alive?
Could it be sleep is all I know?
How could I have made mistakes?
Is there something more for me to learn?
And will I ever make it back to you?
And will you still want me?
Have you been waiting for the sound of my return?
Ill wait for your calling
Ill wait for your calling
Ill wait for your calling
Ill wait for your calling
If I was ever an imperfect son
Or a foolish boy
Or a wretched child
I was only out looking for Jesus I
was only becoming a Godly man!
Pace the floor, wooden legs have never been so silent
And the wind outside the window sounds like heaven,
Youre almost here
Before I was made I was close to perfection
And since I became Ive gone the wrong direction
The lies Ive told, the hearts Ive stolen How
could I pretend to love for so long?
(Oh God, Im a terrible mess today!
My God, Im becoming a monster!)