In the first chapter of My Name is Asher Lev, Asher introduces the reader to his passion for art. This passion is used throughout the pages to express his emotions and reactions toward certain situations. The way he draws is perhaps a symbol that helps define Ashler more as a character. In any case, there is much to infer in his drawings.
It is almost instantly that the reader sees that Asher’s main focus in art is what is going on directly around him. Most of the time he draws his mother or father the way he remembers them. In one occurrence, he draws his mother falling back as she rowed awkwardly down the river. He then received criticism and rebuke for this because his mother only thought he should draw fake, pretty things, and not the reality around him. Perhaps she thought the reality around him was too dismal for a painting to represent, or she was embarrassed that he might be capturing the things she tried to hide. Either way, from then on his mother only wanted him to draw "pretty" things.
Later Asher draws his father in all the instances he once observed. Through his descriptions, it seems that he has great pride and respect for this man, as he draws his father’s tall figure and praying stance. He notices all possible aspects of a picture and incorporates this into his drawings, portraying sorrow and loss when his father wept on Yom Kippur.
Asher’s sense of art is extraordinary with the way in which he expresses his deepest emotions through his work. It seems as thought the art helps him to get out what he is feeling inside. When his mother became ill and asked Asher if he was drawing birds, flowers, and pretty things, he could not answer, for his pictures had become twisted and dark. As if he thought drawings could heal his mother like they helped to heal his sorrow, he drew nesting birds in a perfect blue sky and presented them to her, like medicine. "Here are the birds and flowersÖI made the world pretty, Mama," Asher said. When realizing that they did not help, fear ran through him. The perfect world in his picture disgusted him more than ever, for it was, in reality, not pretty at all. He drew the birds as dead, and from then on, drew things like he saw them.
Asher’s need to draw with more emotion and depth grew and grew. He used his art as a way of escape and removal from the tensions he felt, for the concentration on drawing took up all of his time. By the end of the chapter, his art became an inescapable habit and need. He imagined new ideas he wanted to express and said, "There was nothing I could not do."
Yet, facing more slaps to the face and horrors life dealt him, Asher realized that drawing was useless and foolish in a world such like the one he was living. He prayed to grow up, so he could outgrow this childish way of release, and so in the end, stopped drawing. I am left, as the reader, to wonder what Asher was left with when he no longer had art to fall back on. I am curious to see what he will endure next.