Component 2: 19th-century Novel and Poetry since 1789 - Poetry Anthology: Conflict — Edexcel GCSE English Literature

The Conflict poetry anthology is a central component of Edexcel GCSE English Literature Paper 2. It comprises 15 poems that explore various forms of conflict, from the physical battles of war to internal psychological struggles and social tensions. Students must study all poems and be prepared to compare a named poem with another of their choice, analysing how poets use language, form, and structure to present conflict.

This topic matters because it develops critical analysis and comparative skills, which are essential for the exam and for understanding literature's role in reflecting human experience. The anthology fits into the wider subject by building on poetic terminology and analytical writing from earlier years, while also preparing students for the unseen poetry component, where similar skills are assessed.

• →The 15 poems in the Conflict anthology and their key themes, such as the futility of war, the psychological impact of conflict, and the power of nature.
• →How poets use language techniques (metaphor, simile, imagery, tone) to convey conflict and its effects.
• →How form and structure (sonnet, dramatic monologue, free verse, stanza length, enjambment) shape meaning and presentation of conflict.
• →The importance of context (historical, social, biographical) in understanding the poets' perspectives on conflict.
• →How to make meaningful comparisons between poems, focusing on methods and effects rather than plot summary.

• The poem contrasts openly expressed anger, which ends, with concealed anger, which grows into a poisonous tree.
• The speaker waters the tree with fears, suns it with smiles and deceitful wiles, showing how pretence feeds resentment.
• The apple attracts the foe, who steals into the garden at night, and the speaker finds him dead beneath the tree and is glad.
• Blake uses a simple, song-like quatrain form and regular rhyme to make a serious moral point about hidden wrath.
• The garden and apple evoke the biblical Garden of Eden, linking the poem to temptation, fall and death.
• The poem presents conflict as internal and moral, not only physical, and shows how deceit destroys the deceiver and the foe.
• The poem describes the Assyrian army advancing confidently, compared to a wolf attacking a fold of sheep.
• The Angel of Death spreads its wings and breathes on the sleeping army, killing them overnight.
• The imagery of colour and precious metals contrasts the army's splendour with its sudden destruction.
• The poem's anapaestic metre and regular rhyme create a fast, marching rhythm that mirrors the army's advance and then halts at the moment of death.
• The poem presents conflict as divinely judged: the Assyrian aggression is defeated by a supernatural power, not human resistance.
• The final stanza focuses on the aftermath: the dead soldiers, the silent horses and the mourning widows of Ashur.
• The speaker takes a boat and rows out on the lake, feeling confident and skilled.
• A huge peak appears, described as black and huge, and seems to tower over and follow the boy.
• The boy's confidence turns to fear and he rows back to the shore, where he is left with a troubling, dark vision.
• Wordsworth uses blank verse and enjambment to create a flowing, natural movement that mirrors the boat's progress.
• The poem presents conflict between the individual and nature, and between human pride and a sense of awe or fear.
• The extract is part of a longer autobiographical poem, and the episode shows a moment of moral and psychological growth.
• The speaker describes shooting a man in battle and then reflects that they might have been friends in different circumstances.
• The poem uses a conversational, hesitant voice with dashes and colloquial language to show the speaker's uncertainty.
• The ballad form and simple rhyme scheme make the poem accessible and highlight the ordinariness of the soldier's experience.
• The poem presents war as futile and irrational, with the speaker unable to give a convincing reason for killing.
• The contrast between the pub setting and the battlefield emphasises how chance determines who becomes an enemy.
• Hardy critiques the dehumanising effects of war and the arbitrary nature of conflict.
• Accurate knowledge of the poem's narrative: the speaker recalls being wooed by the lord, contrasts her fallen status with Kate's respectable marriage, and asserts the value of her son.
• Analysis of how Rossetti's ballad form, regular rhythm and refrain-like repetition shape meaning and reinforce the speaker's emotional state.
• Close language analysis of direct address, rhetorical questions and possessive or shame-laden vocabulary, always linked to effect.
• Understanding of context: nineteenth-century attitudes to female chastity, marriage and social reputation, used to illuminate rather than replace textual analysis.
• Structured argument with a clear line of interpretation sustained across the essay, supported by well-chosen embedded quotations.
• Where comparison is invited, balanced discussion of a second Conflict poem in the same prescribed theme, comparing methods and ideas rather than retelling plots.
• Knowledge that the poem depicts soldiers enduring extreme cold and tedium in trenches, with nature as the principal threat.
• Recognition of Owen's use of repetition and half-rhyme to convey monotony and unresolved tension.
• Understanding of the recurring question about the purpose of the soldiers' suffering.
• Awareness of the shift from external description to the soldiers' exhausted, dreamlike thoughts of home and dawn.
• Identification of imagery of ice, silence and water as central to the poem's presentation of conflict with the elements.
• Knowledge that the poem describes six hundred cavalry soldiers charging down a valley into enemy fire.
• Recognition of the poem's rhythmic drive and repetition as imitations of the galloping charge.
• Understanding of the soldiers' obedience to the order and the poem's emphasis on their courage.
• Awareness of the poem's acknowledgement that a military blunder caused the disaster.
• Identification of the shift from action to memorial tribute in the closing stanzas.
• Knowledge that the speaker challenges the term 'half-caste' and the assumptions behind it.
• Recognition of the poem's use of direct address and repeated demands for explanation.
• Understanding of the examples of mixture, such as piano keys and weather, used to argue that combination creates value.
• Awareness of the poem's conversational, Caribbean-influenced voice and non-standard spelling.
• Identification of the defiant closing attitude towards the listener's prejudice.
• Identifies the speaker as a mother reflecting on her relationship with her daughter.
• Recognises the poem's central conflict as the tension between maternal love and the child's need for independence.
• Explains that the poem moves between the birth scene and a later moment of conflict.
• Comments on how imagery of physical struggle conveys the intensity of the mother-daughter bond.
• Identifies the central figure as a photographer documenting conflict.
• Explains the contrast between the reality of war and the safe distance of the reader.
• Comments on the emotional or moral burden carried by the photographer.
• Recognises that the poem explores conflict through witnessing and memory rather than direct combat.
• Identifies the setting as a Belfast street during violent conflict.
• Explains how the title image of 'confetti' is used ironically for debris and missiles.
• Comments on how fragmented form and punctuation reflect confusion and danger.
• Recognises that the poem presents conflict as disrupting language and communication.
• Identifies the speaker as a working-class voice challenging class prejudice.
• Explains that the conflict is social and concerns class, accent and respect.
• Comments on the use of direct address and rhetorical questions to confront the reader.
• Recognises that colloquial language asserts identity and challenges assumptions about superiority.
• Analysis of the mother's emotional conflict: pride, fear, grief and letting go
• Exploration of domestic imagery (poppies, blazer, door, tape) and its symbolic weight
• Comment on form and structure: free verse, enjambment, first-person voice, temporal shifts
• Understanding of the poem's context: remembrance, military service, maternal perspective
• Use of textual evidence to support interpretations of conflict as internal and relational
• Analysis of the speaker's defiant tone and resilient identity
• Exploration of repetition, direct address and colloquial language
• Understanding of conflict as social and racial prejudice
• Comment on how structure and rhythm support the poem's message
• Use of textual evidence to show how the speaker rejects victimhood
• Analysis of the question-and-answer structure and its effect
• Exploration of imagery of destruction and cultural loss
• Understanding of the poem's context: Vietnam War and its aftermath
• Comment on tone: elegiac, sorrowful, detached
• Use of textual evidence to show how conflict erases identity and culture

• 💡Learn the poem's two-part structure: the first stanza sets up the contrast between friend and foe, and the rest traces the growth of the tree and its deadly fruit.
• 💡Revise key methods: quatrains, regular rhyme, first-person narration, garden imagery and biblical allusion.
• 💡Practise linking the poem to the anthology theme of conflict by explaining how hidden anger causes destruction.
• 💡Learn the poem's structure: the first stanza shows the army's advance, the middle stanzas describe the angel and the deaths, and the final stanza shows the aftermath.
• 💡Revise the key methods: simile, colour imagery, anapaestic rhythm and biblical allusion.
• 💡Practise explaining how the poem's rhythm and imagery create a sense of speed and then sudden stillness.
• 💡Learn the extract's movement: from confident rowing to the appearance of the peak, to fearful retreat and lasting unease.
• 💡Revise key methods: blank verse, enjambment, personification of the peak and contrast between light and dark imagery.
• 💡Practise explaining how Wordsworth presents the conflict between human control and nature's overwhelming power.
• 💡Learn the poem's structure: the first two stanzas set the scene, the third and fourth offer the speaker's reflections, and the final stanza returns to the killing.
• 💡Revise key methods: dramatic monologue, colloquial language, dashes, ballad form and contrast.
• 💡Practise writing analytical paragraphs that link the poem's methods to its presentation of conflict.
• 💡Plan for a few minutes: decide your central argument, then select three or four moments that best support it.
• 💡Embed short quotations inside your own sentences and analyse individual words rather than quoting whole stanzas.
• 💡Use connectives such as 'however' and 'therefore' to build a line of argument rather than listing separate observations.
• 💡Leave time to reread for accuracy of quotation and clarity of expression.
• 💡Analyse how the repetition of "But nothing happens" captures the psychological torment of trench warfare.
• 💡Examine how personification portrays nature (dawn with her melancholy army, iced east winds) as a cruel, active enemy.
• 💡Track the tonal shift in the central stanzas as the frozen soldiers drift into memories of domestic warmth.
• 💡Analyse how the dactylic meter and repetitive refrains ("six hundred", "into the valley of Death") create driving momentum.
• 💡Examine the tension between admiring the soldiers' obedience and recording the fatal commander error.
• 💡Highlight how the final stanza commands the reader to "Honour the charge they made!" to immortalize the regiment.
• 💡Analyse how direct address ("Explain yuself / wha yu mean") puts the listener on trial to justify racial prejudice.
• 💡Examine how artistic analogies (Picasso, Tchaikovsky) subvert European cultural authority to defend mixed-race identity.
• 💡Note how the rhythmic, punchy performance style reinforces the speaker’s confident defiance.
• 💡Read the question stem carefully to see whether it asks about the speaker, the conflict or a specific image.
• 💡focus closely on how language and structure create meaning.
• 💡Support your answer by locating the relevant moment in the poem before choosing.
• 💡Identify the speaker and the subject of the poem before answering.
• 💡Focus on aspects that capture the contrast between distance and immediacy.
• 💡Check that your chosen answer refers to the photographer's experience, not just war in general.
• 💡Focus on the effect of specific images such as the map or the asterisk.
• 💡Consider how the poem's form contributes to its meaning.
• 💡focus closely on how language and structure create meaning.
• 💡Identify the speaker's attitude before choosing an answer.
• 💡Focus on aspects that capture the social nature of the conflict.
• 💡Consider how rhetorical questions position the reader.
• 💡Always embed short quotations and analyse specific word choices rather than paraphrasing.
• 💡Link the poem's domestic details to the wider Conflict theme to show conceptual understanding.
• 💡Plan your response to cover feelings, imagery, form and context in a coherent argument.
• 💡Focus on how language choices create the speaker's voice and attitude.
• 💡Connect the poem's social conflict to the anthology theme without forcing battlefield comparisons.
• 💡Use precise quotations to show how repetition and direct address work.
• 💡Analyse the effect of the question-and-answer format on the reader.
• 💡Link specific images of destruction to the theme of cultural loss.
• 💡Consider how the poem's tone shifts between curiosity and mourning.
• 💡Always plan your comparison before writing. Identify the methods you will discuss and how they relate to the theme of conflict. Use a thesis statement to guide your answer.
• 💡Embed quotes seamlessly into your sentences and analyse individual words. For example, instead of saying 'the poet uses the word 'knifes'', explain how 'knifes' suggests a personal, violent attack by nature.
• 💡Use comparative connectives throughout to show similarities and differences. Examiners look for a balanced comparison, not just one poem after the other.

• Misreading the poem as being only about a literal tree and apple; correct by explaining that the tree symbolises growing anger and the apple the tempting trap.
• Assuming the speaker is glad at the end because he has won a fair fight; correct by noting the speaker's gladness comes from his foe's death through deceit, which the poem presents as morally troubling.
• Treating the poem as having no conflict because there is no battle; correct by identifying the internal conflict of suppressed anger and the interpersonal conflict between the speaker and foe.
• Thinking the poem celebrates war; correct by recognising that it shows the sudden, eerie destruction of a boastful army and the grief that follows.
• Confusing the poem's speaker with Byron himself; correct by noting the speaker is a detached narrator retelling a biblical event.
• Assuming the poem has no conflict because it is a narrative; correct by identifying the military conflict and the divine intervention that ends it.
• Reading the extract as a simple adventure story; correct by explaining that it is a profound encounter with nature's power that changes the boy's outlook.
• Assuming the peak is literally chasing the boy; correct by noting the peak seems to stride after him, which is a projection of his fear and awe.
• Overlooking the conflict between the boy and nature; correct by identifying the internal conflict between his initial confidence and his subsequent fear.
• Assuming the speaker is Hardy himself; correct by noting the poem is a dramatic monologue spoken by a soldier, not the poet.
• Reading the poem as pro-war because it describes a killing; correct by explaining that the speaker's regret and confusion reveal an anti-war message.
• Ignoring the poem's form; correct by discussing how the ballad metre and colloquial language contribute to its meaning.
• Retelling the poem's story without analysing Rossetti's methods; correction: make each paragraph a method-led point about language, form or structure and its effect.
• Treating the speaker's bitterness as simple jealousy; correction: explore the wider critique of gendered power, shame and the lord's behaviour.
• Dropping in context facts about Victorian England without linking them to the text; correction: connect each contextual idea directly to a quotation or structural choice.
• Ignoring form and structure in favour of spotting poetic devices; correction: discuss ballad metre, repetition and address as deliberate shaping of the reader's response.
• Assuming the poem depicts a battlefield firefight; the central battle is against hypothermia, despair, and interminable waiting.
• Treating pararhyme (knive us / nervous, silent / salient) as flawed rhyming rather than a deliberate technique to create discord and unease.
• Overlooking the soldiers’ fading religious faith and poignant hallucinations of home.
• Treating the poem purely as nationalistic propaganda without recognizing the explicit acknowledgment that "someone had blundered".
• Overlooking the dactylic meter that imitates the thunder of galloping horses.
• Failing to notice the shift from the exhilarating momentum of the charge to the mournful retreat and final solemn tribute.
• Assuming the poem is an aggressive attack rather than a witty, logically structured satirical argument.
• Viewing dialect and non-standard spelling as informal errors rather than deliberate political assertions of identity.
• Misquoting the poem: the speaker ironically listens with 'half of mih ear' and looks with 'half of mih eye', challenging the prejudiced listener to return with the 'whole of yu eye / and the whole of yu ear'.
• Assuming the poem is about a literal war because it appears in the Conflict anthology; correct by explaining that the conflict is emotional and familial.
• Confusing the speaker with the poet without qualification; correct by saying the speaker is a mother figure whose voice may reflect Clarke's experience but should be discussed as a constructed persona.
• Treating the 'tight red rope of love' as a negative image only; correct by explaining it suggests both connection and constraint.
• Assuming the poem celebrates war photography; correct by explaining it questions the value and cost of such images.
• Confusing this poem with another war poem in the anthology; correct by focusing on the specific figure of the photographer.
• Ignoring the reader's position; correct by explaining that the poem implicates those who view images of suffering from safety.
• Reading 'confetti' literally as celebration; correct by explaining its ironic reference to riot debris.
• Assuming the poem describes a single clear narrative; correct by explaining that the fragmented structure mirrors disorientation.
• Overlooking the role of language; correct by explaining that punctuation and syntax are part of the poem's presentation of conflict.
• Assuming the poem is about military conflict because it appears in the Conflict anthology; correct by explaining that the conflict is social and class-based.
• Reading the speaker's tone as purely angry; correct by explaining that it is also proud, defiant and questioning.
• Ignoring the role of language; correct by explaining that accent and vocabulary are central to the poem's argument.
• Assuming the poem is only about Remembrance Day poppies; correction: the poppy symbolises both remembrance and the mother's personal loss, woven into domestic life.
• Treating the son as a definite soldier killed in action; correction: the poem implies departure and possible military context but does not state death explicitly.
• Ignoring the mother's voice and focusing only on the son; correction: the poem is a dramatic monologue from the mother's perspective, and her feelings are central.
• Reading the poem as purely angry or aggressive; correction: the tone is confident and dismissive, asserting strength rather than rage.
• Assuming the poem is about physical war; correction: the conflict is social and racial, fought through language and attitude.
• Overlooking the poem's humour and musicality; correction: Zephaniah's rhythm and wit are central to its defiant effect.
• Treating the poem as a simple history lesson; correction: it is a poetic elegy exploring loss and memory, not a factual account.
• Assuming the speaker is Vietnamese; correction: the voices are a detached questioner and a respondent, creating a dialogue about a destroyed culture.
• Ignoring the poem's form; correction: the Q&A structure is central to its meaning, contrasting ignorance with grief.
• Students often think that 'conflict' only means war. Correction: Conflict encompasses a wide range of struggles, including inner conflict, social conflict, and conflict with nature or authority.
• Students believe that quoting extensively is enough. Correction: Quotes must be analysed in detail, with a focus on the effect of specific words and techniques, not just identified.
• Students assume that all poems present conflict negatively. Correction: Some poems, like 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', present conflict with a sense of glory or honour, though this can be interpreted ironically.

1. 1Week 1: Read and annotate all 15 poems, focusing on key themes, methods, and context. Create a revision table for each poem with quotes, techniques, and links to conflict.
2. 2Week 1-2: Practise comparing poems in pairs or groups. Use past paper questions to write timed essays, focusing on a named poem and one other.
3. 3Week 2: Review examiner reports and mark schemes to understand assessment objectives. Refine your analysis to include precise subject terminology and contextual links.
4. 4Ongoing: Use flashcards for quotes and techniques, and test yourself with active recall. Revisit poems you find challenging and seek feedback on your essays.

• 📋Comparison question: 'Compare how poets present the effects of conflict in [named poem] and one other poem from Conflict.' Advice: Choose a poem that offers a clear point of comparison, and structure your answer around methods and effects.
• 📋Single poem analysis: 'Explore how [poet] presents conflict in [named poem].' Advice: Although you only focus on one poem, you must still analyse language, form, and structure in detail, and link to the theme of conflict.
• 📋Unseen poetry comparison: 'Compare how the poets present conflict in [unseen poem 1] and [unseen poem 2].' Advice: Use the same analytical skills, but focus on the poems provided, identifying methods and comparing them.