Separation of Self: Analyzing Citizen Kane

In the movie, "Citizen Kane", the director Orson Welles, portrays the main character Charles Foster Kane having a mimetic relationship with his family and friends. Charles Kane is separated from his community by the use of different narratives, innovative camera angles, deep focus, and manipulation of on-screen space. As the movie progresses Kane furthers his distance from the social world due to his controlling mentality. The dialogue becomes less, and the cinematic separation becomes more evident as Kane declines into seclusion and a mimetic state. Orson Welles uses many cinematic techniques to show Kane as having a mimetic relationship to his community of relatives and friends.

When Kane's mother comes into huge wealth she sends her son Charles Kane away to grow up with her financial advisor Thatcher. Kane resents being taken from his normal life and the safety he felt there and never settles himself to that event in his early childhood. As a result, Kane grows up to be an arrogant and uncaring man who separates himself from others. In due course, his outlook on life estranges him from everyone who cares about him. Not only does he lose his newspaper, his fortune, and his friends, but he ultimately dies a lonely man. As an adult Kane has a vast amount of wealth and control but has no emotional protection with those who surround him. This absence of security apprehends his maturity and fuels his charge against authority. Because of his wealth, Kane has no motivation or incentive to subject to social norms. With his lost childhood and uncaring efforts to form he creates separation from those around him.