SOURCE: "The Metamorphosis: Kafka's Study of a Family," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4, Winter, 1977-78, pp. 578-86.

In the following essay, Cantrell examines the Samsa family in light of the work of psychiatrist R. D. Laing, focusing on "the relationship between the strange and the ordinary aspects of family life. "

Critical discussions of Kafka's The Metamorphosis have long been based on the questionable assumption that the Samsa family's judgment of Gregor, the son, is accurate. In fact, literary critics have been nearly as severe and unanimous in their condemnation of Gregor Samsa as is the Samsa family itself. "When Gregor first appears before his family," Mark Spilka writes, "they are appalled by his condition, and their revulsion gives the full measure of his deformity." Like other critics, Spilka shares the Samsa family's revulsion against Gregor for more subtle reasons than antipathy to mere physical deformity; as he...