Tobe's Secret

In William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily", an anonymous resident offers a vivid description of a woman's detestable actions in a small southern town. Emily, an eccentric old woman, has died and the body of her boyfriend, Homer, murdered some forty years before, is discovered in her bedroom. The narrator says that "Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (11). With that statement, the narrator implies that her servant, Tobe, preserves this "obligation" to Emily within the town. Tobe functions superbly as Emily's servant. He goes beyond what is expected of him in his duty as servant to Emily, by silently keeping her murderous secret from the townspeople. His service to Emily may even include his role as an accomplice to murder.

Throughout the story Tobe is never referred to as a citizen or neighbor, he is only spoken about in relation to his duty and actions as Emily's servant. Tobe reads as if he is an afterthought, as a subdued and quiet spirit, that the narrator might otherwise have forgotten about, if the narrator, and the town had not been using Tobe as Emily's timekeeper. The narrator "watched the negro (Tobe) grow greyer and more stooped" (168) as the years passed by. Although no one, save Tobe, saw Emily for nearly forty years the town continued to see her as a curious monument, kept by a silent, and seemingly mute Tobe. Tobe cared for Emily day and night, always seen coming and going with a market basket, and answering the door when the few people called on Emily.

It is possible that Tobe was the actual, or had a hand in, the murder of Homer. The narrator tells us that Tobe is "a combined gardener and cook" (3). As a servant, Tobe's chores would include preparing and serving meals. Being the exceptional servant that he is, he would not have allowed anyone to prepare or serve any food. "A neighbor saw the negro man (Tobe) admit him (Homer) at the kitchen door at dusk one evening" (148-149). Emily, acting like the respectable woman she is, would ask Homer to stay for dinner. Being that Tobe is the cook, he would be the one to poison Homer if the arsenic is in the food. Even if he did not place the poison in Homer's food, and Emily slipped it into a drink for Homer at dinner, Emily could not have been able to move Homer, "a big, dark, ready man" (94), upstairs, because she was "a slight woman" (113). Emily needs a person with much more strength than she has, such as Tobe, to help her move Homer into the room upstairs. Even if one gave Emily the strength of Hercules, and the speed of Superman for this one act of transfer, Tobe still would have to know about the body in the bedroom upstairs.

Tobe had to notice