Use of language reveals the gulf between Krapp's more youthful perspective and the aged Krapp's loss, regrets, unhappiness and self-disgust.

Narrative recall by the middle-aged Krapp is fluent, tender, precise and lyrical. The poignant excerpt from his 'farewell to love' account, beginning 'We drifted in among the flags and stuck', effectively juxtaposes the imprecision of 'drifted' against the forceful, monosyllabic 'stuck'.

The learned younger self was also given to rhapsodising, philosophically and pedantically intoning and declaiming, which the older Krapp mocks as naiveté and pretentious nonsense [VCR: 31.20]:

'What I suddenly saw then was this, that the belief I had been going on all my life, namely - [Krapp switches off impatiently …]'

'…clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most - [Krapp curses, switches off …]'

'… unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with the light of the understanding and the fire - [Krapp curses louder, switches off …]'

With happiness beyond recovery, old Krapp angrily attempts to record one last tape. But he, being done now with work, with love and with religion, realises he has only his dreams and must tread softly [VCR: 53.00]:

'Be again in the dingle on a Christmas Eve, gathering holly, the red-berried. [Pause.] Be again on Croghan on a Sunday morning, in the haze, with the bitch, stop and listen to the bells. [Pause.] And so on. [Pause.] Be again, be again.'

Again and again he is drawn back to the original recording to relish its poetic flow of sensuous detail [VCR: 33.35]:

'- upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank, then pushed out into the stream and drifted. She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said.'