Inner Conflict & Anger
Conflict Within
Not all conflict involves armies and battlefields. Three poems in the Edexcel Conflict anthology explore internal struggles: A Poison Tree by William Blake examines how suppressed anger grows into something destructive; Extract from The Prelude ‘Boating’ by William Wordsworth dramatises a terrifying encounter with the power of nature; and Cousin Kate by Christina Rossetti voices a woman’s fury at being used and discarded by a powerful man. Each poem shows how inner conflict can be just as devastating as physical violence.
A Poison Tree — William Blake (1794)
Blake was a Romantic poet who challenged the rigid social and religious structures of his time. A Poison Tree is an allegory about the dangers of suppressed anger. The speaker tells his friend about his wrath and it ends; he hides his anger from his enemy and it grows.
Blake uses the extended metaphor of a tree to chart the growth of hidden rage. The speaker “waterd it in fears, / Night & morning with my tears” and “sunned it with smiles, / And with soft deceitful wiles.” The natural imagery of watering and sunlight is ironic — nurturing language is applied to something toxic. The anger grows until it bears “an apple bright” which the speaker’s enemy steals and eats, and is found “outstretchd beneath the tree” — dead.
The “apple bright” is a biblical allusion to the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Just as the serpent tempted Eve, the speaker’s suppressed anger creates a deadly temptation. Blake implies that dishonesty and repression are more destructive than honest confrontation.
The poem has four quatrains with a simple AABB rhyme scheme and regular rhythm, giving it the feel of a nursery rhyme or children’s fable. This simplicity is deceptive — the childlike form makes the dark subject matter (murder through deceit) even more disturbing. The contrast between innocent form and sinister content is itself a kind of conflict. Each stanza advances the narrative one step: anger expressed, anger concealed, anger growing, enemy destroyed.
Extract from The Prelude ‘Boating’ — William Wordsworth
Wordsworth’s autobiographical epic The Prelude (published 1850) traces the development of his mind and imagination. This extract describes a boy stealing a boat at night and rowing across a lake. At first, the experience is joyful: “lustily / I dipped my oars into the silent lake.” But as he rows further, a “huge peak, black and huge” seems to rise from behind the smaller hills and pursue him.
The conflict here is between the boy’s confidence and nature’s overwhelming power. Wordsworth personifies the mountain: it “Strode after me” with “measured motion like a living thing.” The boy is terrified and rows back “with trembling oars.” For days after, his mind is haunted by “huge and mighty forms, that do not live / Like living men.” Nature has permanently altered his understanding of himself.
Wordsworth wrote this as blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter. The lack of rhyme and stanza breaks creates a continuous, unbroken flow that mirrors the boy’s rowing and the relentless advance of the mountain. The form reinforces the sense of an experience that overwhelms normal structures of thought.
Cousin Kate — Christina Rossetti (1862)
Rossetti writes from the perspective of a “cottage maiden” who was seduced and abandoned by a lord. The lord then married her cousin Kate instead. The speaker is left shamed and outcast: “The neighbours call me an unclean thing.” Her anger is directed at both the lord (“He lured me to his palace home”) and at Kate (“O cousin Kate, my love was true”).
The ballad form (ABCB rhyme, regular metre) gives the poem a folk-song quality, which suits its story of love, betrayal and social injustice. Rossetti uses possessive language to show how the lord treats women as property: “He wore me like a silken knot, / He changed me like a glove.” The similes reduce the speaker to an object — decorative, disposable, easily replaced.
The poem’s final twist is powerful: the speaker has a son (“my fair-haired son, my shame, my pride”), while Kate remains childless. In Victorian society, producing an heir was a woman’s most important role. The speaker’s “shame” (an illegitimate child) becomes her triumph — she has something Kate, for all her status, lacks.
Blake (A Poison Tree): The conflict is between expressing and suppressing emotion. Blake argues that repression breeds something far worse than honest anger — it breeds calculated cruelty.
Wordsworth (The Prelude): The conflict is between human confidence and nature’s sublime, terrifying power. The boy’s self-assurance is destroyed by an encounter he cannot control or understand.
Rossetti (Cousin Kate): The conflict is between a woman’s love and the patriarchal society that exploits and discards her. The speaker channels her betrayal into defiant pride.
All three poets are from the Romantic or Victorian period. A strong AO3 response would discuss how each reflects the tensions of their era: Blake’s challenge to religious repression, Wordsworth’s worship of the sublime, and Rossetti’s critique of Victorian gender inequality.