“Those who lost” by Zbigniew Herbert as the rescuing gesture of irony

The article is a typical analysis of Zbigniew Herbert's poem “Those who lost”. The composition of the poem is marked by the title phrase, which asks who lost and what was lost. The protagonists are the Indigenous Americans, who abandoned their tradition, "rejected the history." They perform professions that are foreign to them such as appearing in films and selling devotional articles. However, we come to the conclusion that those who "lie in the tomb next to the faithful stones" avoided the sad fate. Paradoxically, although they met their deaths, they avoided annihilation.