04-11-2016, 10:44 AM
This reads a whole lot stronger. Even so, the final couplet loses the emotional connection, for me. Throughout and up to that point, I feel you and I feel your trainee/replacement, as human. The narrator displays a genuine connection to both points of view that feels real. Then it goes into analytical mode with the last two lines. And I am not convinced; the body of the poem says something different to me, than those two lines do. It speaks of two sides of the same injustice. The ending couplet somehow dehumanizes the people involved and sets them against each other.