Conflict overview — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Conflict overview
Overview
What you need to know
The 15 poems at a glance, from Romantic poems of envy, guilt and destruction to modern poems of war, empire, migration and prejudice: poet, date, form, speaker and the conflict each one explores.
A map of the cluster by theme and by form, so you can choose a fitting poem for part (b) of any question.
A table of the 15 poems: poet and dates, when the poem was written where known, form, speaker, the conflict it explores and one short quotation each.
Conflict in its widest sense: between nations and armies, within families and communities, between cultures, and inside one mind, since the cluster is about conflict, not only war.
War and its victims: The Destruction of Sennacherib, Vergissmeinnicht, What Were They Like?, Lament and We Lived Happily during the War.
Those who watch, remember or stand by: Partition, We Lived Happily during the War, What Were They Like? and Papa-T.
Empire, migration and identity: Colonization in Reverse, Papa-T, Partition, Flag and Thirteen.
Conflict inside the mind: Envy, Boat Stealing, There’s a Certain Slant of Light and Honour Killing.
Prejudice, power and the individual: Thirteen, Honour Killing, Colonization in Reverse and Songs for the People.
Guilt and responsibility: We Lived Happily during the War, Partition, Boat Stealing and Vergissmeinnicht.
Nature and conflict: Boat Stealing (nature as a power), Lament (nature as a victim), Envy (nature as a lesson) and The Destruction of Sennacherib (similes of nature for an army's rise and fall).
Childhood and youth: Thirteen, Boat Stealing, Papa-T and Songs for the People.
Hope and an end to conflict: Songs for the People, Envy, Honour Killing and Colonization in Reverse.
Pairing by form: strict rhyme and metre (The Destruction of Sennacherib, Envy, Songs for the People, Flag), Dickinson's dashed hymn quatrains and Douglas's half-rhymed quatrains, Bennett's rhyming quatrains in Jamaican Creole, Wordsworth's blank verse, and free verse (What Were They Like?, Lament, Honour Killing, Partition, Papa-T, We Lived Happily during the War, Thirteen).
Voices to compare: a persona speaking to a friend (Colonization in Reverse), questions and answers (Flag, What Were They Like?), a confession in the first person plural (We Lived Happily during the War), you in the future tense (Thirteen) and a mother's memory retold by her daughter (Partition).
Choosing a poem for part (b): OCR's questions so far, on longing for conflict to end (2024) and on the changes conflict brings (2025), and the specimen's, on lives reshaped by conflict, with the poems that fit each best.
The five poems that joined the cluster in 2022 (Colonization in Reverse, Papa-T, We Lived Happily during the War, Thirteen and Songs for the People) and the five they replaced, A Poison Tree, The Man He Killed, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Punishment and Phrase Book, which can no longer be written about.
OCR's question on this cluster has two parts. Part (a), 20 marks, compares a named poem from the cluster, printed on the paper, with an unseen poem on a linked theme, and rewards analysis of language, form and structure (AO2) most, then your response (AO1); an answer on only one of the two poems cannot go above Level 3. Part (b), 20 marks, explores one other poem from the same cluster that you choose, from memory, with AO1 and AO2 equally weighted; a poem from a different cluster means only the higher of your two marks counts. Neither part marks context: use it only where it explains a reading. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the part it is for.
