Charles Foster Kane Analysis

Charles Foster Kane is a wealthy newspaper tycoon. He was able to buy his own newspaper because his mother inherited a gold mine. At a very young age his parents sent him to live with his personal banker in many different cities. Being taken from his family at such a young age made him hate his guardian and made him very rebellious. This lead him to buy the New York Inquirer instead of investing in other things like his banker told him to. His first wife was the president’s niece, which gets him interested in politics. He runs for governor of New York, but loses due to his affair with Susan Alexander being exposed. He had a chance to keep the affair from the public but chose not to because he believed that no on could threaten him, instead ruining his marriage. He had an obsession with making his second wife an opera star, even though she wasn’t very good and refused to hear criticism about her. He wanted to make her a star because people told him he couldn’t, so he wanted to prove them wrong. His second wife left him because he wanted her to be a certain way, but didn’t really care about how she felt. He realized that

even though he had so much power, he couldn't get everything he wanted.
When he first bought the newspaper he promised to expose the truth.

However, he soon felt what power was like and changed. He started to publish things that made him look good and worked in his favor. He starts making up stories in order to become more popular than other newspapers. His search for power causes most problems in his life. By wanting to control everything, he loses people that are close to him and makes more problems for himself.He loses his first wife because he refuses to spend so much time working and doesn’t really pay attention. He later has an affair and chooses to keep running for governor instead of trying to keep the affair quiet and save his marriage. He also loses his best friend because he refuses to go along with Kane’s style of journalism and instead decided to write the truth about Susan Alexander, Kane’s second

wife.
There is no real resolution to his problems. With his wives, his problems with them end with their divorce. However, after the end of his second marriage he may no longer have marriage problems, but he has the problem of loneliness. This is only solved with his death. His problems with his best friend, Jedediah Leland, end when Kane fires him, but he loses his closest and oldest friend.
Rosebud probably represented a happier time in Kane’s life. The sled reminded him of when he was a child and he was carefree. The snowglobe reminded him of that because of the snow. When he first saw it he immediately remembered what it was like in Colorado. It represents a more simple time, when he didn’t worry about money, power, wives, or what people thought of him.
The snow globe with the snow and the cabin first reminds him of a sled he used to have as a child in Colorado. He almost broke it when he was destroying Susan’s room, but immediately stopped when he saw the scene it contained. The sled was named Rosebud and he still had it with him after all those years. He kept it throughout his life to remind him of a different time