Tobe, the African-American servant, is Miss Emily's only connection to the outside world. People see him coming and going from her dilapidated house carrying a market basket. As she refuses to leave the house, he is the only way she can get what she needs from the outside world. He allows her to live in total isolation.
In addition, Tobe serves to maintain a veneer of faded elegance. When visitors, such as the tax collectors, show up at Miss Emily's house, he lets them in, maintaining the appearance that Miss Emily is a still a genteel southern lady of economic means. Miss Emily cannot move on from the past, and Tobe is a sign of her archaic ways. Tobe also ceremoniously ushers visitors, such as the tax collectors, out of the house so that Miss Emily doesn't have to deal with them when she no longer wants to...
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do so. During the entire time he works for Miss Emily, he betrays absolutely nothing of what goes on in Miss Emily's house. Therefore, when she dies, the townspeople did not even know she was sick. He also betrays nothing about what happened toHomer Barron.
What is Tobe's role in "A Rose for Emily"?
In most novels and stories, there are several types of characters, including the protagonist (the hero), the antagonist (the villain), the stock character, and others. When we discuss a writer's characterization, we often distinguish between "flat" or two-dimensional characters and fully-realized, "round," three-dimensional characters. In "Rose for Miss Emily," for example, Miss Emily and the townspeople might be considered to be fully-realized characters. Tobe, on the other hand, is a stock or two-dimensional character.
Throughout the story, we never see Tobe other than as a minor agent of minor action--that is, opening doors for visitors, working in Miss Emily's kitchen, running errands, and we hear him only once or twice. There is little for us on which to base any kind of judgment about Tobe because he we are never privy to his thoughts, except by implication, and his entire role in the story is to carry out perfunctory actions. In other words, nothing he does affects another character or the essential action of the story.
The only time we see something of Tobe's inner self is perhaps when he is described as opening the door for the visitors to the funeral and then quickly leaving the house through the back door, never to be seen again. Obviously, he knew what the town was going to find upstairs and didn't want to stay there for explanations.
What does Tobe represent, and why is he important in "A Rose for Emily"?
Tobe is Miss Emily Grierson's black manservant, who faithfully serves the Grierson estate even after their demise. Tobe is most often referred to as "the Negro," which implies that Miss Emily and the community of Jefferson still practice racial discrimination. Similar to Miss Emily and the older members of Jefferson's community, Tobe symbolically represents the Old South before the Civil War, when slavery was commonplace and legal. Tobe behaves like traditional black servants of the Old South by catering to Miss Emily's needs, never speaking, and walking out the back door. Tobe's swift, silent exit out the back door after letting in a group of citizens into Miss Emily's home symbolically represents the slaves getting their freedom following the Civil War. Although Tobe is a minor character, he symbolically links Emily Greirson to the Old South and addresses the racial component of the time period.