Citizen Kane Ending

Citizen Kane is a film that revolves around the death of public icon Charles Foster Kane, and reporters trying to find out the meaning of his final words. Throughout the film Thompson, the reporter, goes to multiple different places to meet the various people in Kane's life including his partners and his wives. The ending was particularly significant as everything beings getting tied together. I enjoy how the director doesn't have the reporters or the world find out the significance of "Rosebud" but the viewers do. The director also loops back to the globe, not only as an item that he drops after saying his final words but also as the same globe his last wife left behind. To elaborate, the director starts the film with his death, final words and the dropping of the globe expressing a significance to his life. Then, spends the entire film trying to find out why. The same snow that covers the screen at the beginning and the camera zooms in on, before his death, is the same snow-like transition that the director uses when beginning the childhood flashback. Charles is then playing in the snow, and we learn about his attachment to the sled. At the end of this flashback the sled sits there as snow piles up on it when he leaves. Forwarding many years Thatcher then gives Kane a sled for Christmas, and is rather straight faced. The last time we see the globe is when he picks it up and says 'Rosebud'. It is the one thing that Kane does not destroy when wrecking everything in his wife's room once she leaves. One can infer that the small house and the snow in the globe reminds him of his early childhood with his family, as shown in the flashback.

At the end this is then confirmed when the sled is being burned and on it is printed, 'Rosebud'. He says "Rosebud" while holding the globe symbolizing his past; he never got rid of his sled. I think he died holding the globe symbolizing not wanting to let go, and the good in his life before the rollercoaster in his life. In addition, at the end Thompson says, "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." I believe "Rosebud" was a word that strongly impacted his life and even explained it, due to his childhood. The sled specifically was a part of a jigsaw puzzle in his life. It was something he always had but didn't know what to do with it. When he left his home to go with Thatcher, everything changed. Was Rosebud really the definition or explanation of his whole life?