Powerless peasants standing up to the complex Austro-Hungarian bureaucratic apparatus, usually in court, is a theme that recurs throughout Kočić's works. His stories were often satirical in nature and dealt with the everyday hardships faced by the Bosnian Serb peasantry, mocking the Austro-Hungarian administration and pointing out its flaws. They also had patent didactic overtones. "These features alone," Hajdarpašić writes, "the satirical tone, the complaints about the government, the comparisons to the Turkish yoke, do not stand out as particularly exceptional, suggesting in fact rather narrow targets of Kočić's critique." According to Hajdarpašić, stories such as "Jazavac pred sudom" "enabled him to encapsulate a wide array of grievances in an accessible and entertaining literary form."