This episode featured an unusual format, in that it resembled a play, with each character’s speech being preceded by their name. This different formatting allowed for inanimate objects to have a “voice” as well, which was particularly interesting to my obsession of the unspoken, as these inanimate objects truly cannot speak.

Other than the moment where Stephen speaks to his hat and it replies, the other instances are usually objects that speak sort of nonsense sounds or nonsense words. The Bells say “haltyaltyaltyall” (15.181), which is later followed by The Soap singing “We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I. He brightens the earth. I polish the sky” (15.338-9). Almost all of the examples that I found seem to fall into these two categories; the objects either simply “spoke” a sound they were likely to make, or they said some short little nonsense sentence. The objects that said little phrases were far more interesting, but I was unable to discern a pattern from them.

Below are some more examples of inanimate objects speaking, specifically the second category I mentioned, where they say a short nonsensical phrase:

• The Wreaths: Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of Sin (15.656)
• A Deadhand: (writes on the wall) Bloom is a cod (15.1871)
  • unsure if this actually might be a person?
• The Buckles: Love me. Love me not. Love me (15.2009)
• The Gramaphone:Jerusalem! Open your gates and sing Hosanna(15.2171-3)