Mussolini in the Rain: Black Shirts Parading in Rome, 1922--if you did not identify the "Wife" as the point of view in "Cat in the Rain," you might not have noticed that she failed to be aware of any of the political turbulence that was part of the "historical situation" in Italy when the American tourists were in their seaside hotel.  Marxist interpretation cares equally about what authors notice and what they do not notice, and will blame an author (for instance) for writing about the ante bellum American South without noticing slavery.  In this case, though, the Marxist critic would have read "Soldiers Home" and would realize that Ernest Hemingway was perfectly capable of transmitting tons of "historical situation" and "material circumstance" when it suited the story.  His omission of that evidence in "Cat" was due to the the Wife's point of view, which he expected readers to critique as culturally naive and blinded by consumerism and patriotism (her bizarre beliefs about the Italian hotel owner and maid).  If you did not follow my explicit instructions to research economic and historical background on 1917-25 Italy, it may be because New Criticism's doctrine of "the text, itself" as the primary relevant evidence (taught to you in English 200) prevented you from applying Marxist methods you were perfectly capable of describing and explaining in Part One.