Conflict and violence — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Conflict and violence
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores the feud, honour, violence and the conflict between love and hate across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Two households, both alike in dignity', 'I hate the word, / As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee', 'Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace', 'A plague o' both your houses!', 'fire-eyed fury be my conduct now', 'See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate'.
Conflict inside the Capulet family as well as between the houses, and the public brawls that frame the play.
OCR's question on this play is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the play elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the play, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts as the play shows it, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
