If Witkacy provides the structural and textural framework of Dead Class, and Schulz gives it its philosophical and existential framework, then it is Gombrowicz who provides the play's subtly ironic and iconoclastic undertone. In Dead Class, Kantor, as he himself explains it, reads Schulz through Gombrowicz, paying homage to Gombrowicz's cult novel, Ferdydurke. In his review of Kantor's show, Jan Bończa-Szabłowski points out that, besides Schulz, “The child-mannequins carried by the old people remind us of Gombrowicz's thesis about an eternal childhood lasting into old age, but also of the vision of the world as a classroom. The place where we still have some delusional hope that we will learn something, find some definitive meaning to our actions, feelings and dreams.”

Born in 1904, Gombrowicz studied law in Warsaw while simultaneously pursuing his literary ambitions. His first volume of short stories was published in 1933, and his first comedy, Iwona, Princess of Burgundy, was published two years later. In 1939, Gombrowicz traveled to Argentina for two weeks, but war broke out, and he ended up staying in Argentina for over 20 years, working at a bank to support himself. For a long time, Gombrowicz was considered a dissident writer by the Polish postwar communist government, and he published his work through Kultura, a magazine for Polish intellectual emigres in Paris. In 1950 Gombrowicz published his novel Trans- Atlantic. It was followed by another novel, Pornography, in 1960, and by Cosmos in 1965.