Citizen Kane

Zoe Fox

Period 3

Citizen Kane

The Truth Behind Rosebud?

The entirety of this film is based around the question: what is “Rosebud” and why is it such a huge deal that the whole world knows what “Rosebud” signifies? At first I was shocked that “Rosebud” was Charlie Kane's childhood sled, but then I began to analyze the film as a whole.

Throughout this entire film, you see Kane peak and then crash. Meaning before everything came crashing down around him, including relationships with friends and loved ones, his life was mostly full of success when it came to work. But was Kane ever really truly content? Basically the only scene where we saw Charles Kane truly happy was when he was being framed by the window in the front of his house, chanting and playing with his sled, also known as “Rosebud”. But, by the end of the scene, you can see the sled being snowed on, which is sort of really what happened to Kane's life.

We see Kane try to replace his happiness throughout his film, trying to “find his youth” which was the one point of his life in which he was genuinely happy. Through marriages and money, Kane tries to find a stable source of happiness. While he finds happiness in Emily at one point, that ended. Susan Alexander? That ended too. Money and success can’t be everything. An interesting quote that still is stuck with me is when Susan Alexander and Kane were talking about he said, “You don’t know many people? I know too many people. I guess that means we’re both lonely.” Loneliness is a big part of this film, and loneliness, to me, goes hand-in-hand with sadness.

On Kane’s death bed, he said his last word “Rosebud”. “Rosebud” is much more than just a 

sled. Rosebud is Charlie Kane’s only true source of happiness that he had throughout his entire 

life, and I guess he wanted to go out feeling something other than loneliness.



Question/s: Can anyone go through life being completely unhappy or completely happy? 

Can money buy happiness?