Interestingly, Chapter 2 opens with a vivid detailed description of the bunkhouse where the farmworkers live. I discussed how Steinbeck actually envisioned the novel as being produced as play and thus why the opening paragraph resembles stage directions. I further noted this detailed diction as an element of the realist genre . Chapter 2 introduces Curley's wife , who remains nameless. We discussed this literary device as means to make the character universal. I then asked Marcel to infer something about her personal history and character from the author's sexually provocative descriptions . Thereafter , I handed out a letter John Steinbeck wrote to the famous actress, Claire Luce, who played Curley's wife when the novel was dramatized in 1935. In his letter, Steinbeck describes why Curley's wife behaves and dresses the way she does by providing a family history of this fictional character. We then discussed why Curley's wife married a boor , like Curley, due to her exasperating loneliness and hope to be understood or appreciated. We then reviewed Marcel's study guide responses to chapters 1 and 2 and supplemented answers where needed. I emphasized the deep connection between the American Dream and the literary concept of America as an Eden. I directed Marcel to the text, and had him identify Edenic imagery, such as a garden and a life without labor, within the characters' descriptions of their imagined American Dream.