Journal For My Name is Asher Lev.

Chapter 3 Response

The third Chapter of “My Name is Asher Lev” seems to me to be one of those “everything happens” chapters. After practically having nothing happen in the previous chapter; in this one Stalin dies, Asher finds he’s going to move to Venice, and probably of the most importance to the story, Asher starts drawing again. In fact he ends up having an obsession with drawing a dead Stalin “in his coffin surrounded by flowers.” It seems to me to be a chapter that is meant to do several things one of which I have just attempted to explain.

The second purpose of the chapter, in my opinion, is to thrust art back into the foreground, after having it lingering in the background in the ending pages of chapter two. It may or may not be important, but it is interesting to note that Asher stops drawing very suddenly in the last sentence of chapter one; and begins drawing very suddenly in the very last sentence of this chapter. While part of this seems to be merely the author’s (Mr. Potok) style of liking to end chapters with abrupt shocking cliffhangers it surely also has a deeper meaning. It seems obviously symbolic. It seems to me, that Asher pretty much stops drawing in the first chapter because he sees the world as ugly, and nobody is accepting his view, his voice.

I do believe Asher begins drawing again for much the same reason, although subconsciously (He even draws Stalin Subconsciously!) There are differences of course. In chapter one the people around Asher (especially his mother) also think the world is ugly, they just don’t want to see it. In this new chapter, many, but not all the people around Asher do not view the world as ugly. Stalin is dead, and many of their problems are over. But Asher, like Yudel Krinsky sees that the problems are still great, and that the world is still ugly, even ugly for those who are in- charge, such as Stalin. He is overcome by this, and his feelings burst forward through his drawings. My thoughts on this are supported by Asher’s quote which he mummers shortly before he draws Stalin, one which he has not said in the book for many pages. “It is not a pretty world Mama.” To strengthen the comment further he says it completely out of context. This too would have made a good “end the chapter” line.

One other, less symbolic use of this chapter seems to be to set up the rest of this book. We find that Asher is going to move to Vienna, we learn what is going on there, and the situation in the rest of Europe, which assuming that the “moving theme” continues, could drastically change Asher’s life. But the main “moving the story forward” idea is Asher’s art, and I have already noted that excessively.

One last thing which just keeps popping into my head is Asher’s view toward Stalin after his death. In Asher I see no rejoicing, no great relief that Stalin, the devil/Sitra Archa as they refer to him several times, is dead. Neither do I see hate toward Stalin, even bad feelings of almost all sorts are absent. In fact, it seems to me that Asher to a certain extent, connects with Stalin, almost pities him in his own way. I say this for several reasons. First off, Asher is mesmerized by the picture of Stalin in his coffin. He seems shocked that this man could die. He sees that although Stalin got his way all the time whilst alive, in the end, the world is “not a pretty place” even for him. In the end, even he gets the ugly world, he loses to life too, he dies. Asher seems to see Stalin as one who almost had his pretty world for himself, but lost even worse than most, because the ugly completely overcame him. Weather that is a decent explanation of my point I know not, and I might very well by completely wrong, but that is my view.

I am about out of things to say about this chapter, although this Journal seems a great deal better than the struggling chapter 2 journal which I was not pleased with. It left an ugly taste. Yuck. Anyhow, I shall stop rambling, and conclude with. “The world is not a pretty place Mama.”