The word Rosebud is arguably one of the most famous words ever uttered on the big screen, yet it's significance in the film Citizen Kane, is much debated. While it is clear that Rosebud is a necessary piece of the puzzle that is Citizen Kane, almost seventy years after the films' debut, it is still unclear how it fits together. There are many common explanations for Kanes dying word, which range from Rosebud as an allusion to William Randolph Hearsts personal life, to Freudian explanations about Kanes attachment to his mother. None of these, however, supply the audience with the resolution that they crave. Therefore, in this bibliography I will examine a less intuitive idea put forth by Robert Carringer. This Bibliography tells a story which concludes with the thesis that Rosebud holds no meaning beyond itself. It is a MacGuffin; a mechanism used not to explain the man Charles Foster Kane, but to explore different perspectives about him. 'Rosebud' provides an association to the central symbol of the film (the snow globe, according to Carringer) which shows the audience a more accurate portrait of Kane. I begin by emphasizing that Rosebud is indeed a vital component of Citizen Kane, as is illustrated in an essay by Tony Jackson. I will also illustrate that is seems quite ambiguous to many viewers, including film critic Bosley Crowther. I then show that while Welles himself supplied contradictory explanations for Rosebud in response to media pressures, this inconsistency makes sense in the context of Carringers argument. If Rosebud is indeed a MacGuffin, then Welles would have no real explanation for it independent of the theme of the film. It would therefore be logical that in response to pressures he felt from the audience and the media, he would create meaning that would appease each specific complaint. In the opening of the movie, Rawston creates a premise that Rosebud will explain everything; that Kane is a simple man whose life can be summed in a single word. Thompson provides an opposing view, in which Rosebud is only one of the missing pieces to the portrait of Kane that he is trying to reassemble. In doing so, the film leaves open the question of whether or not Kane can actually be understood by the audience. Had he provided a consistent response for questions concerning Rosebud, Welles would have undermined this central conflict in Citizen Kane. By instead supplying varied responses, Welles leaves the question as an open one. Finally, I will provide additional support for Carringer's theory, taken directly from the words of Orson Welles, and from articles written by other authors. NOTE: This project is most clear if viewed in the order indicated by the numbers in the titles of the sources.

Carringer, Robert L. "Rosebud, Dead or Alive: Narrative and Symbolic Structure in Citizen." PMLA 91 (1976): 185-193. JStor. 9 Apr. 2008.

This article delves deeply into the role that Rosebud plays in the film, and challenges the significance of the sled as an important element of the story. On face value, the sled is the object that Thompson is out to find from the very beginning, and it can be interpreted at face value as a symbol of innocence lost, as could be suggested by Kane’s own quips about how “if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” However, this article delves far deeper and claims that there is much evidence to suggest that the sled is merely what Hitchcock came to call a MacGuffin – effectively an item of little intrinsic value to the story that allows the characters to stay motivated in their actions. The author sites as evidence the numerous changes between the original script and the final version of the film that steer the film away from focusing on Rosebud as a solution and play up the idea that, as Thompson suggests, that Rosebud is simply one piece in the very complicated portrait of Kane. Furthermore, we are reminded in this article that the character who associated the most importance to Rosebud in the first place, Thompson’s boss, is little more than a mockery of the typical Hollywood producer focused more on “angles” and “gimmicks” than he is about the truth.

Meanwhile, the author asserts that the object to which we should attach far more importance is the little snow globe in the beginning of the film. Kane was a rich man his entire life and worked ardently to craft for himself a world that suited him. He was displeased with the way that things were done, and used his power and influence to create his own world, as is found inside the snow globe, which was ultimately smashed into a number of pieces of glass, representing the different pieces of him that people saw.