The Anguish of Living in the City

Abstract

In Graciliano Ramos' novel Anguish, the gradual psychical dissolution of the main character, Luiz da Silva, has a close relationship to the conditions of modern urban life. The city is sometimes referred to or signified as Babel, the original urban chaos, and other times as Babylon, the urbs corrupted by vice. Furthermore, recurring metaphors like those of the rats (meaning degradation of life, corruption of sexuality, or the predatory character of bourgeois materialism) and the emphasis on the feelings of anguish, reveal connections between Ramos' novel and philosophical/psychological concepts of Angst in Freud, in Kierkegaard and in Heidegger.