Tools of Characterization

Characterization in Citizen Kane

Actions

You can a lot by a person from their actions. Charles Foster Kane, for example, buys a small newspaper and spends nearly all his young life using that paper to fight for the rights of the poor. Yay!

However, we quickly figure out that this crusade isn't just about principles—it's about Kane's ego. (Boo.)

On the surface, it might look as though all his actions are for the poor. But you have to look at the tension between his actions and what he actually believes to know the true man. After all, would he really spend all his money on a giant mansion and super-expensive statues if he really wanted to help the poor?

Thoughts and Opinions

When we first meet Charles Kane as a young man, it seems like he's truly an idealistic guy who's going to make a difference in the world. But the more we get to know him, the more we realize that his ego motivates him a lot more than his principles do.

We get a really good look at this whenever he says that people will think what he tells them to think. As a newspaper owner, he considers it his duty to mold people's opinions to be like his own. But that's always Kane's problem—he never really sees other people as being as fully human as himself.

Occupation

Charles Foster Kane starts out as a poor kid in Colorado. But by the time he's grown into a young man, he's inherited a huge fortune from his mother. His bank advisers tell him to spend his energy looking after his properties and holdings, but Kane is much more interested in becoming the publisher of a newspaper.

In the end, he doesn't really care about money as much as he cares about making people love him. Money is just a means to an end, and he figures that by choosing newspapers as his occupation, he'll be able to manipulate people into thinking he's the greatest person ever.

But, as he finds out at the end of his life, he can't just force the world to be whatever he wants it to be… and no occupation in the world is going to give him the power to change that.

Sex and Love

As several characters tell Kane, he doesn't really know how to love properly. He only knows how to dance around and spend money, hoping that this will force people to love him. But what he doesn't understand is that true love requires vulnerability and a true sense of give and take.

Kane doesn't know how to do this because he's a control freak. He sees money and power as things that will force people to love him, and he lives out the last of his lonely days without ever realizing that this is impossible. Love is a two-way street, no matter how many times he tries to repave it.

Social Status

Charles Kane starts his life as a poor kid in Colorado and he ends it as a lonely and crazy millionaire living in a giant mansion in Florida. In between, he tries to wear all kinds of hats by becoming a newspaper publisher and then running for governor of New York.

But from the moment Mr. Thatcher takes him away from home, Kane is always in the upper class. Sure, he can pretend to be a friend of the working class. But he doesn't really care about them as much as he cares about defying people in power and making the public love him.

Kane likes to think he's different than any other greedy rich person, but he's not. In the end, he's just greedy for love instead of money. He's just as cutthroat as any businessman when it comes to getting what he wants.