Conflict in Power & Conflict
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The Power & Conflict poetry anthology in the AQA GCSE English Literature brings together fifteen poems that explore human experiences of power, control, and crucially, conflict. These poems span centuries and contexts, yet they share a fascination with how individuals, societies, and even nature itself deal with opposition and struggle.
Conflict in these poems is never simple. It is physical and psychological, public and private, historical and deeply personal. By looking closely at how different poets present conflict, we can see patterns, contrasts, and the deeper messages behind the words.
Understanding Conflict: More Than Just War
When we hear the word “conflict,” our minds often jump straight to war. While several Power & Conflict poems are explicitly about warfare such as Bayonet Charge, Exposure, or Charge of the Light Brigade, others deal with very different kinds of struggle: power struggles between rulers and the ruled, tensions within families, the inner conflict of guilt, or even mankind’s conflict with nature.
This is key for exam preparation: conflict in this collection isn’t limited to battles. It’s about clashes of forces: emotional, moral, social, or environmental. And the most compelling poems often explore not just the external conflict, but the internal aftermath.
Physical Conflict: War and Its Realities
Several poets tackle the raw experience of war, stripping away any romantic or heroic illusions.
Wilfred Owen’s Exposure portrays soldiers suffering in the freezing trenches of World War I. Here, the enemy isn’t just the opposing army — it’s nature itself. The wind, snow, and ice become weapons, described with violent verbs and harsh, sibilant sounds: “merciless iced east winds that knife us.” The soldiers’ conflict is with both the weather and their own despair.
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade takes a different angle, celebrating the bravery of soldiers who obeyed orders, even when those orders led to a doomed cavalry charge. The poem presents the tension between heroism and futility — the soldiers’ courage contrasts with the tragic waste of life caused by military blunders.
Ted Hughes’ Bayonet Charge zooms in on the psychological chaos of a soldier mid-charge. Through fragmented syntax and violent imagery, we see conflict not only with the enemy, but also within the soldier himself, questioning what he’s fighting for as he runs: “King, honour, human dignity, etcetera.”
In these poems, war is a setting for broader questions: What drives people to fight? How do they cope with fear? What happens when patriotism collides with the reality of violence?
Psychological Conflict: Guilt, Trauma, and Memory
Some poems focus less on battle and more on its aftermath — the lingering mental scars.
Simon Armitage’s Remains captures a soldier haunted by a killing he can’t forget. The casual tone of the first half (“probably armed, possibly not”) contrasts with the obsessive, repetitive guilt in the second half (“his bloody life in my bloody hands”). The conflict moves from a street in war to the soldier’s mind, where it cannot be escaped.
Jane Weir’s Poppies explores a mother’s emotional conflict as her son goes off to war. The language is soft, tactile, and domestic, blending everyday imagery (spasms of paper, crumpled petals) with grief and anxiety. The battle here isn’t fought on a field but in the heart of a parent fearing loss.
These poems remind us that conflict doesn’t end when the fighting stops; it continues internally, reshaping identity, relationships, and memory.
Power Struggles: Political and Social Conflict
Not all conflicts are military. Some deal with social hierarchies, political oppression, and challenges to authority.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias explores the arrogance of rulers and the inevitable decay of human power. The “king of kings” boasts of his greatness, but all that remains is a broken statue in the desert. The conflict here is between human ambition and time, between pride and nature’s unstoppable erosion.
William Blake’s London presents a city scarred by institutional oppression: “mind-forged manacles” suggest that even freedom of thought has been constrained. The conflict is between the powerful (church, monarchy, government) and ordinary people, whose suffering is both visible and ignored.
Beatrice Garland’s Kamikaze depicts a pilot’s inner conflict between patriotic duty and personal desire to live. The cultural pressure to sacrifice himself contrasts painfully with the joy of nature and human connection, ultimately leading to his rejection by society and family when he chooses life over death.
These works expand the idea of conflict to include injustice, propaganda, and the crushing weight of societal expectation.
Nature as a Force of Conflict
Several poems show nature as a source of power and opposition — an almost divine, uncontrollable force.
Seamus Heaney’s Storm on the Island depicts nature as both familiar and terrifying, showing how a community braces against storms that can “explode comfortably.” The language mixes casual and violent imagery, suggesting that humans can never fully tame the natural world.
William Wordsworth’s The Prelude (extract) shows a personal conflict with nature. The young speaker rows out at night, initially feeling powerful, only to be overwhelmed by a looming sense of nature’s immense, mysterious force. This awe borders on terror and reshapes his sense of humanity’s place in the world.
These poems remind us that conflict isn’t only human-to-human; sometimes it is human versus the vast, indifferent forces of the planet.
Across the Power & Conflict anthology, poets use different forms of conflict to ask big questions:
How does power corrupt or inspire?
How do individuals endure trauma, guilt, or fear?
What happens when personal morality clashes with cultural duty?
Are humans ever truly in control, or does time, nature, and history always win in the end?
By studying these poems side by side, we see not only the destructive potential of conflict but also the resilience, courage, and vulnerability of those who live through it.
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