Theme Of Citizen Kane A Story

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Reader-Response Question: Citizen Kane as a “Failure Story” What I believe Orson Welles means by Citizen Kane being a “failure story” is, despite Charles Foster Kane’s immense amount of wealth and status due to his career as a newspaper tycoon, he is a man who is very unhappy in life. The story shows how prosperity and power is ultimately useless in the absence of genuine love from others. Being put under the guardianship of New York City banker Walter Parks Thatcher by his mother in order to live a more luxurious life, Charles Kane is removed from his mother’s affection at an early age. This removal from the family could also be seen as a loss of innocence, a lack of childhood and freedom from responsibility. Since Kane associates Thatcher as being a part of his separation from his family, he resents him and acts out against Thatcher by attending prestigious schools (Harvard, Yale, etc) and gets himself expelled from all of them. Another way that Kane rebels against Thatcher is by taking control of Thatcher’s newspaper the New York Inquirer and runs it in a manner that would lose t...

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