The Pit

The best known work of Ivan Goran Kovačić is Jama (The Pit). He penned it during the war, while in service near the town of Livno. The poem was written out of intellectual and ethical responsibility that condemns atrocities and massacres done by the Croatian Ustaše. It has been described as a metaphor about the sufferer, martyr, and victim: The sufferer is when a person without fault suffers. The martyr is when nonhumans torture a person. The victim is when the whips of injustice extinguish life. That is Goran’s metaphor. And his life. His work is an example of anti-war poetry with messages against torture, mass murders and war crimes. Jama was studied in elementary schools throughout the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.