The Downfall of Charles Foster Kane

 Charles Foster Kane is one of the most polarizing figures I have ever seen on the big screen. He is the star of the movie Citizen Kane, and is spectacularly played by Orson Welles. He was created into the man we see through childhood trauma, in my opinion. At the beginning of the movie we see Kane, a carefree child playing in the snow in Colorado, uprooted from his family and taken to live with a strange man out east. This young boy would grow up to become to the leader of the New York Inquirer because "it seems fun." Despite his youthful happiness and energetic livelihood into his entrepreneurship, he eventually was met with an inevitable downfall. There are two things that led to his eventual downfall, and this piece will dive into both of those reasons. 

The first big reason Charles Foster Kane had a ferocious collapse throughout the plot of Citizen Kane was his ego. I think his ego can be summed up perfectly through one scene, and that is the party scene. This part of the movie gave extreme Wolf of Wall Street type of vibes. I think this dinner party scene can only speak to the ego of Charles Kane. He was apart of the choreographed dance with the dancers. I think this extremely lavish scene spoke to the ego of Kane and just how he had almost become too big for his own good. I like to look at it is though he flew too close to the sun and burned his wings, and this scene was his peak. His downward trajectory would follow after this scene.

One of the other big reasons that I think Charles Foster Kane had a severe downward trajectory is how he treated people closest to him. His treatment of Leland was one of the things that stuck out to me the most. He was quick to fire him and mistreat him. His ego had a large part to play in this mistreatment of Leland. One of the other people that he treated extremely bad was his first wife. Not only did he cheat on her with his second wife, but there was one scene in particular where I think his mistreatment of his wife was evident. He was talking with her at their dinner table, and he made a point of trashing the current President of the United States, who happened to be related to his wife. This arrogance and mistreatment of his wife actually ended up possibly costing him his campaign for governor. He was caught by his opponent running around with a "singer", who ended up being his second wife. This mistreatment of his wife came back to haunt him and greatly contributed to his downfall.