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Tobe is Emily Grierson's servant. He attends to Emily and her house and remains intensely loyal to her throughout the story. Tobe dutifully carries out Emily's requests year after year, and never deserts her. Even after Emily's death, Tobe refuses to share details about Emily's life or unearth her well-kept secrets. In fact, after her death, Tobe abandons Jefferson altogether. The town observes that one day he suddenly "walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again."
Tobe provides vital insight into Emily's character and the depth of her isolation and secrecy. As Emily shrouds herself in her house and severs herself from the community, Tobe represents her last remaining connection to the outside world. In fact, the narrator observes that "the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man." Over the years, Tobe ceases to speak, and his silence echoes his connection with secrecy and discretion.
Tobe also reflects racial and social structures in the American South. Jefferson is a town that clearly holds on to the past, with its residents still donning Confederate uniforms as a symbol of honor and respect. The townspeople almost exclusively refer to Tobe by modern-day derogatory terms denoting his race, rather than by his name. Tobe occupies a subordinate position, existing at the whim of another, carrying out her every order and dictating his life based on her requests. Consequently, Tobe enables readers to glimpse racial dynamics of the Old South.
