Isolationism In Casablanca

Casablanca is a movie that takes place in the French-ruled Morocco during WWII. The story is about Rick Blaine, the owner of a nightspot and an exiled American. He is asked to hold two letters of transit from a man named Ugarte. These letters will let anyone leave the country without questioning. A man named Lazlo comes to Casablanca with his wife and Rick's former love, Ilsa. This story is about how Casablanca is a metaphor to compare how America's isolationist attitude kept them from entering WWII and how this is shown in Rick too.
When the movie first starts, we see Rick as a person who does things only for himself. He does not care that there is a war going on and he does not care about his lover, Yvonne. Rick also does not care about his customers and he will not accept any drinks from them. Multiple times in the movie, Rick says, “I stick my neck out for nobody.” This shows that he is only interested in himself. During WWII, America would not join the war because they thought that it would not benefit them at all. They would only …show more content…
He realizes that Ilsa is very loyal to her husband Victor Laszlo. Though at first Rick is very mad at Ilsa that she did not leave Paris with him, he realizes that she had a very good reason not to. Victor Laszlo cannot get out of the country because a man named Major Strasser says that he will never get out of the country alive. When Rick realizes that he really loves Ilsa, he makes sure that Ilsa and her husband are the ones to use the letters of transit and get on the plane to Lisbon. He realizes that this is a chance of redemption so that he could be the person he was before. This is like when America changes from self-interest to self-sacrifice. They join the war to help Britain and France to win the war so that Germany cannot take over. America does not join the war because they remembered WWI, but because their allies needed to help win the