citizen kane

Charles Foster Kane was a very wealthy newspaper publisher whose life is the subject of the movie. He grows up to be an arrogant and callous man, but very powerful. Kane has many actions in the film that seem contradictory and unexplainable, but they are really not. If you take a look at his childhood most of his actions can be explained. When Kane is only eight years old he is sent away to live with his mom’s banker, Thatcher, because his mom comes into a big fortune. This sudden separation from his mom keeps Charles from growing past the needy and aggressive behaviors of pre-teens and always keeps him longing for some type of emotional attachment. He could never get close to Thatcher, Kane kept pushing him away when he tried to act parental, or anybody else. That is why as an adult Kane’s obsessive spending and collecting reveal that he is trying to fill that empty space inside him with objects instead of people, because everything he buys is for the sake of having it, not because it gives him joy. All Kane really wants is something that he can love. An example of this is when people kept talking about Rosebud and wondering who or what it is but nobody could figure it out. Finally it ends up being his sled from when he was younger and got it taken away from him, but then he got another one named Crusader. Though it was not the same because Kane was just trying to fill that hole.