A Pen By The Phone By Debra Anne Davis

In “A Pen by the Phone” by Debra Anne Davis, the author flashbacks to her past about her father. Throughout the story, Davis gives the reader a perspective on what her childhood was like, mostly related to her father. Davis informs us what her father would do in his spare time, which, according to the story, was mostly reading on the couch. Davis attempts to inform the reader about what her father was like and to relate the father to the reader which is achieved by appealing to the reader's sense of caring by using repetition and the author provides anecdotes about her father which include humor and precise details.

Davis pulls on the reader’s heartstrings by describing what her father was like and how much she misses them. “Looking back

The author says this to make the reader feel melancholy about the passing of her father and the author achieves her goal of using the reader's sense of caring. When the author says, “We all miss him” it makes the reader remember someone else in their life whom they may have lost. When the reader remembers someone they may have lost, it gives them a connection to what the author is saying about her father and how she aspires to be more like him. In paragraph two, Davis says, “I brushed and styled Dad’s hair. He continued reading. Mom (as the story goes) came in and reminded him that he needed to pick Beth up at work. So he left to go get her. Poor Beth. Sixteen years old and completely mortified…when her father drove up with a rainbow of barrettes covering his tangled hair,” which shows the reader how much her father cared for her because even though he had to go pick up Beth, he still allowed the author to brush with his hair. The reader feels bad for Beth because the author uses the word “mortified,” which makes the reader feel bad for what Beth had experienced that day. This quote mostly relates to current parents because they know what it is like to have children and to have to care for them. Parents will feel this sense of caring because they relate to what the father went through

The author opens the story with the quote, “Lying flat on his back on the family couch, a book or folded-back magazine held straight over his head by an arm bent 30 degrees at the elbow, his belly a small hill against the tapestry landscape,” which shows the reader what her father would do on the daily and provides selective details about her father. These select details about him may connect the father to the reader because the reader may do something in the same element as him. The author tells a story about her dad going into public with rainbow hair clips in, which is followed by the quote, “This story is told, as such stories are because it contains that humorous central image: a grown man wearing little girl hair accessories” (Davis 3). The author tells a humorous story to the reader to connect them to the humorous side of the father, rather than the serious side, which is shown throughout most of the essay. Using a humorous story is followed by a more serious story about how her father kept having his pens taken, which shows us that the author uses select stories about her father to inform the reader about his different sides. “He’d answer the phone in the kitchen; it would be for someone else; he’d want to take a message. Yet, this quick task, this basic courtesy was impossible for him to perform” (Davis 4). This quote is another story of why her father wanted a