Charlie Kane’s collecting character and major spending shows us that he is trying to fill an empty space inside himself with materialistic items. From early on in the film, we know that this empty space is a direct result of his abandonment as a child by his mother. When he was about 8 years old, his mother basically sold him to Mr. Thatcher in order to protect him from his abusive father. Although she meant well, she ultimately stunted his emotional growth. Kane is never again able to develop a normal emotional attachment to his parents as most children are. Because of his anger towards his mother, he refused any sort of parental guidance from his new guardian, Mr. Thatcher.
Mr. Thatcher tries to buy Charlie’s approval with money, wealth and power. Although Kane was generally uninterested in all of these things as a adolescence, it further impaired his ability to acquire normal feelings for friends or women because it taught him that people can be bought with money instead of with true feelings. Charlie had no incentive to follow any social norms such as obeying authority or treating people with respect because of the great deal of wealth that he grew up with. Even when we think that Kane is genuine and normal, like when he begins to run The Inquirer, he is really only doing so for more power in the social and political world.
Towards the end of the film, Susan says to Charlie, “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, especially from Susan. 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.
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 ones who loved him, like 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.
To hide his hurt feelings from the public, he created a dominating and powerful personality that we see during most of the movie. We only find out things about him through fragmented memories of his friends. And often, these memories are not very reliable due to old age or alcoholism. Despite this, we as an audience understand that this is not Kane’s true personality. Kane was able to cling to this external persona right up to the time of his death, even after he lost his fortune, his wife, and his best friend.
