Citizen Kane Rosebud: “I always gagged on the silver spoon”
“Citizen Kane”,a somewhat fictional adaptation of famed publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, uses the protagonist Charles Foster Kane as a barometer to navigate the dysfunctional public image and private person. The movie opens with the portrayal of another short film examining the death of one of America’s greatest media tycoon, Kane, and his final word “Rosebud”. The entire film of “Citizen Kane”, a journalist for the “National Enquirer” was sent by the corporation to get to the bottom of these last words. After interviewing just about anyone who had ever gotten close to Kane, the journalist recognizes that for someone like Kane who had everything, the little things don’t matter so he gives up on the venture. Ironically, in the ending of the movie right after the journalist gives up, the camera picks up on an object with the word “Rosebud” engraved.
“Rosebud” is significant because it recognizes the internal conflict within Charles Foster Kane. The one who he presented to everyone else and who he felt he was. In both his eyes and in the early publics’, he wanted to be that little boy in Oregon which though lived in poverty lived with his true family and was able to be a happy young kid. His childhood is quickly interrupted by his sending away, as it is written in a family members’ will to do so for him. His mother in order to receive the benefits of the estate sends him off to the Northeast where her son will reap the benefits of an urbanized environment and an affluent education. During his time in the North where he is ushered into the family magnate business and is supposed to be groomed to success he works his hardest to destroy the money. Getting kicked out about seven top-rated universities and refusing to join the family business and instead choosing to establish an empire within the realm of honest newspaper creation. With establishing the “Daily Enquirer”, he creates a standard of principles to abide by. Over the course of building his empire, Kane loses track of these principles and succumbs to the lifestyle of celebrity. Cheating on his first wife, abandoning the people and spending frivolously to get whatever he deems necessary and believing he has ownership over the people he invests in. He treats his personal relationships as if they are business relationships, three times repeated are statements on love by two people who Kane deeply valued on a personal value; by Susan Alexander Kane “Love! You don’t love anybody! Me or anybody else! You want to be loved -that’s all you want! I’m Charles Foster Kane. Whatever you want – just name it and it’s yours! Only love me! Don’t expect me to love you!”, Jedediah Leland, “That’s all he ever wanted out of life… was love. That’s the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn’t have any to give” and “You don’t care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love ’em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules.”

Jerry Thompson:” No, I don’t think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn’t have explained anything… I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a… piece in a jigsaw puzzle… a missing piece.” As for “Rosebud”, it represented his past his ability to actually love. See Rosebud was the sled he tried to use to resist Mr. Thatcher taking him to live in affluence. In his death, as they raid his palace which he created and his dying words being “Rosebud” suggests the inability to recreate such an environment. When things began to fall apart with the departing of his second wife he uttered those same words. It seems to be when his luck falls and the literal chips are measure against him he reflects back on his youth. The missing piece was the sanity he left back in Oregon.