This paper addresses the relationship between anguish and creativity based on the novel Anguish by Graciliano Ramos. The author shows some aspects of this narrative that can be used to investigate act and creation through the experience of anguish. The use of the psychoanalytical reference is unfolded in two plans: psychoanalysis applied to literature and literature applied to psychoanalysis. In the former, the focus is on the plot, in which the protagonist lives anguish and because of it he is impelled to perform an act; in the latter, the plan of creation of the novel is analyzed and anguish can be inferred as the cause of the creation act.
anguish; psychoanalysis; literature; act