Private Parts.

“No, I don’t think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn’t have explained anything… 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.”

Rosebud was William Randolph Hearst’s woman’s private parts. That was what rosebud meant to Orson Welles… or not. “Maybe rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost”. At the very end of the movie, we found out that rosebud was the name of a sled; and at the very start of the movie, we noticed that little Charles left his sled behind; and then we understood that that sled that he left behind signified everything that he left behind – his childhood, his innocence, his mother and his father. “Maybe rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost”… Private parts. Aside from the beginning of the movie, we see no signs of “innocence” or even pity from Charles Foster Kane. He worked to get what he wanted, he worked Susan Alexander to get what he wanted, he worked Mr. Bernstein to get what he wanted, he left his wife to get what he wanted. “I am Charles Foster Kane!”. We did get even a glimpse of that little boy who lost his sled, his parents and his simple life of playing in the snow; all we saw was a man who was somewhat selfish and would go out of his way to get what he wanted. “Maybe rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost”. Maybe, just maybe that Orson Welles had used rosebud for a whole different reason. Rosebud was somebody’s private parts. Throughout the movie, that little boy who lost everything was sort of a “private part” in the great Charles Foster Kane’s life. As mentioned before, we didn’t get even a glimpse of that side of him during his adult years. Perhaps rosebud was Charles Foster Kane’s private part – little Charles. He surpressed that side of him, he ignored that memory of being taken away. Rosebud, private part.

“Maybe rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost”. In my opinion, rosebud was simply a part of Charles Foster Kane that was lost, or hidden. He kept it submerged somewhere beneathe all the power and the alpha-male dominance.