Society against the individual in coming together in my name" I reassured myself. I was helping my man. And, after all, there was nothing wrong in sex. I didn't need shame. Society dictated that sex was only sanctioned by marriage documents. Well, I didn't agree with that. Society is a conglomerate of human beings and that's just who I was human What we have here from Maya Angelou's novel, Gather Together in My Name, is the fundamental battle of society against the individual. Well, according to Angelou, the answer is that no one wins because everyone loses theme that most needs to be addressed for two reasons. One is that Maya Angelou is one of the first black women to write about the "Ritas" of the world. The second, which is the one analyzed in this essay, is in reference to the criticism of John Oliver Killens: "This is the story of a great heroine who knows the meaning of a struggle and never loses her pride or dignity. In fact, his This story makes me proud of the human race." "I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, but I made a promise and I found my innocence again, I swore I would never lose it again. " Those words spoken by Rita at the end of the novel seem to support Killens' assessment. However, although an eighteen-year-old mother, who has had numerous failures and even a greater number of adventures, may know quite well "the meaning of a struggle", it is not said that he ever loses his pride and dignity, in fact, it is doubtful whether, even at the end of the story, he has already found it or not having stopped smoking weed or after quitting prostitution or after (about the fifth time) promising herself that she would get her life together Unfortunately, none of these apply, because Rita didn't actually stop using of the weed, he just ran out of it. Rita sleeps with a drug addict named Troubadour Martin for the security she thought she would receive from him.