In spite of his gregarious character,
Charlie Kane was a deeply lonesome person. He was constantly searching for
approval from those around him even though people viewed him as powerful and
thought that he had it all. Unfortunately, Kane’s loneliness was permanent
because he refused to share his past or his hurt with anyone—even Susan. His
main goal in his life was to find and secure the love that he lost with his
mother. However, he was generally unsuccessful and tried to substitute those
lost feelings with materialistic things such as fame and money.
Towards the end of the film, she
says to him “You’ve never given me anything. You’ve tried to buy me into giving
you something.” Although he desperately
wanted someone to love him, he didn’t know how to properly show someone else
love. Instead, Charlie often tried to buy love.
Money was Kane’s substitute for the genuine feelings that he never
developed as a child. Even when he was able to attract friends and women, they
eventually grew and matured, which Kane was unable to do, so they would often
leave him.
To hide his hurt feelings from the
public, he created a dominating and powerful personality that we see during
most of the movie. Kane clung to this external persona right up to the time of
his death, even after he lost his fortune, his wife, and his best friend.
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ReplyDelete(Group 6)
ReplyDeleteI agree with the sad fact that Kane had to resort to buying love and happiness in order to fulfill the lack of love he received growing up. I think this is really realistic because you see celebrities today and assume their lives are perfect, but just because they have ‘everything’, doesn't mean they have love or happiness. This is even proven in the time expectancy of celebrity marriages. People and magazines joke about how short they are, but you see just how selfish and incapable some rich people are of loving because their success and lack of a happy or normal childhood can unfortunately get in the way.
(Re-written)
ReplyDeleteI think you just about nailed it by saying he tried to buy love. However, I'd take it one step farther and say he was more trying to buy happiness than just love. Charles had his happy childhood taken away from him at a young age. Once he got older and had the proper financial means, he bought everything he could think of to try to fill that void of happiness. He even attempted to buy love by pampering his wives with material objects. As you stated, Charles Kane was basically unable to hold onto emotional bonds with other people, and he drove most people away from him. Even his closest friends and business partners were eventually driven away.
This very idea that he tried to buy happiness became apparent at the end of the film. After Charles had died, the camera panned through his massive warehouse full of material objects that he purchased from around the world. Many of the objects (like statues) weren’t even taken out of their shipping boxes. It was as if Charles Kane was trying to buy as many things as he could to fill a large emotional void he had in his life. It wasn’t until the last scene that you see a sled called “rosebud” burning in a furnace that you realize what the premise of the movie was. A sad part of the story is that Charles had this “rosebud” for a long time and didn’t even notice it, because he had so much other junk covering it up.
-Adam H.