Citizen Kane Essay
Orson Welles cinematic classic, Citizen Kane, is a film that centers on a group of reporter s
investigation into the meaning of Charles Foster Kane s last word, Rosebud. Through their
investigation of his last words, the team of reporters, is presented with an almost, but not quite,
complete picture of Citizen Kane s life. By assuming that the man s last word was as grandiose as his
life, the reporters miss out on the bigger, more holistic picture, which is Charles Foster Kane s life.
The reporters emphasis of attention on what turns out to be a small and trivial, although they never
find that out, aspect of Kane s life, make Citizen Kane a perfect example of the pitfalls of over
interpretation. ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
Whenever something is broken down into its component parts and these component parts are analyzed
and interpreted individually, some of their meaning is lost. For example, a doctor who specializes in
the heart, a cardiologist, knows a whole lot about a small aspect of the greater whole, the human body.
By studying the heart in isolation, with no connection to the rest of the body or its organs, some of the
hearts meaning is lost. Just saying that the heart pumps blood is meaningless to the layperson ignorant
of biology. The questions of why the heart pumps blood, what is blood, and how does the heart
interact with other organs still remain. Not to mention more specific questions such as how other
organs, such as teeth, which an orthodontist would be more likely to know, are effected by and affect
the heart. A movement within psychology, known as Gestalt psychology, summed this holistic
ideology up nicely with its tenet The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
It follows from this argument that if a piece of art is broken down into its component parts to be
analyzed and interpreted, the form or structure of the artwork is ignored. By focusing one s attention
on specific and possibly trivial aspects of the piece of art s content, the piece s overall structure is not
considered. In respect to Citizen Kane the over interpretation of Rosebud, leads the reporters to ignore
the structure of
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