Conflict Poetry Theme Questions (CCEA GCSE)

This resource has been designed to assist pupils in their study of CCEA’s GCSE Conflict Poetry Anthology.

The document is split into 16 themes and provides questions to help students generate thematic arguments to assist them in their theme-based exam question. The relevant poems to that theme are also documented beside the questions for convenient comparison and reference.

As this document aims to help consolidate a thematic understanding of each poem, it is is best used after the the initial study and analysis of each poem.

Although this has been designed with the CCEA Specification in mind, it can be similarly used/easily adapted for other specifications that feature Conflict Poetry.

Themes covered: Attitude to Conflict, Death, Doubt, Duty, Fear, Futility of Conflict, Impact of Conflict, Inner Conflict, Loss of loved ones, Memory, Motivation/Reasons for Conflict, Non-Combatants in Conflict, Remembrance, Survival, Treatment of the Dead, Understanding the Enemy.

Poems:

The Charge of the Light Brigade (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Vitai Lampada (Henry Newbolt)
The Man He Killed (Thomas Hardy)
Who’s for the Game? (Jessie Pope)
Easter Monday (In Memoriam E.T.)(1917) (Eleanor Farjeon)
Anthem for Doomed Youth (Wilfred Owen)
An Irish Airman Foresees his Death (W B Yeats)
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII) (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Vergissmeinnicht (Keith Douglas)
Bayonet Charge (Ted Hughes)
Requiem for the Croppies (Seamus Heaney)
Mametz Wood (Owen Sheers)
Last Post (Carol Ann Duffy)
Poppies (Jane Weir)
Out of the Blue (Simon Armitage)