Chapter six begins as Asher starts to realize how much he truly misses his father. It’s only until he leaves that he notices the what kind of and effect his father hand on him. He admits to himself that he feels closer to his father when he is gone and Asher misses him, than when he is home, and is only absent in a more local sense. I think that Asher is realizing that in some ways, he has taken his father for granted, and now that he is so far away, he tries to make sense of the relationship that they did have. It almost sounds similar to the way he talked about his mother in chapter one when he explains the things he did with is dad in this section of the book.
The relationship between Asher and his mother stays for the most part, pretty much the same. She is busy studying, thinking about Asher’s father in Vienna, and trying to give Asher some attention when time will allow. Asher paints his first oil painting of his mother, and is very impressed with his results. It’s ironic that it is his mother that buys these supplies for him, from Yudel Krinsky’s store.
Many times throughout the book I have noticed that Asher’s parents are aware of something that is going on in his life, or something that he has done when it would be expected they have no clue what was going on. For most of the story, Asher’s parents have been depicted as remaining very removed from his life, and his everyday happenings. But when something troubles him, All of a sudden, one of them will be aware of the event that had taken place. I find this strange, and I think that I surprises Asher at times too, how much his parents actually know about him.
Asher misses his father a great deal. He says to himself that sometimes, he would like to be able to tell his mother that he would like to go to Vienna to be with his father, but he cannot because he has always been so torn between the two possibilities. If he goes to Vienna, he can’t study art, and if he stays here, he can’t see his father. Both important to his life. Asher’s father is able to visit home, and he feels that this will be a good time to visit, but he is wrong. When Asher’s father arrives, he is already distraught about his son’s performance in school. He comes home hearing that he has been surrounded by more art than ever before, and his own wife had been the one to aid him in this. She had bought the supplies to let him learn how to paint, and she had also taken him to the Museum. What’s even worse, is that Asher had been drawing pictures of nudes and Jesus Christ. Asher had never seen his father this mad at him or his mother before in his life, and that fact scared him. His father was giving him the impression that he was a terrible, evil son, and a disgrace to his people. He was ashamed, and this had a profound effect on Asher.
In the last chapter we saw Asher ignoring the people that surrounded him. Now, he is paying for that ignorance. What he has done to the people he cares about was beginning to effect him only when they started to react. He wasn’t thinking about these things when he acted. I think that Asher is also very confused. His mother does one thing to aid the need he has to do his art, yet when his father finds out about this, he is furious. Both parents hold and equal amount of power in Asher’s eyes, and for one to same one thing while the other says another must be a hard situation to decipher.