CHAPTER 2 JOURNAL

Asher's academic problems in the second chapter of My Name Is Asher Lev can be attributed to the deep emotional problems he is facing. A child of only 6 should not have to deal with the problems he has to everyday. His mother's illness not only takes a mother from him but also friend. Although his mother had apparently come out of her depression, she was not the gentle hearted person whom Asher had had. The warm caring mother asher had in the beginning whom could devote almost all her time to him was gone. In her place there was a mom who no doubt cared for him, but had to juggle being a student, and also dealing with her brothers death still. This led to Asher to stop drawing. To him, as his father had told him, it was time to grow up, he could no longer command the entire attention of his parents, so he had to outgrow foolishness. Oddly it was his mother who missed the drawing the most. The same mother whom Asher thought he could cure by making the world pretty in his drawings. I believe Asher's inability to bring his mother out of her depression with his drawings, causes him to stop because they did not have a use. If he could not make the world pretty for his mother he was not good enough at drawing. If he wasn't good then it was foolishness because it served no one any good. His mother encouraged him to continue, but Asher had it driven into him but his father that it was an ill of childhood, and since Asher had stopped he was finally growing up.