Carringer, Robert L. "Rosebud, Dead or Alive: Narrative and Symbolic Structure in Citizen Kane." PMLA Vol. 91, No. 2 (March, 1976): 185-93.             

    In this analysis of Citizen Kane, Robert Carringer opens with the idea that to assign any meaning to ‘Rosebud’ is to ‘reduce Kane’s life to a Freudian epigram.’ Furthermore, all attempts to explain the symbol away have ended in it being viewed as a cheap Hollywood gimmick. To Carringer, the confusion about the theme of Citizen Kane is created by the fact that everyone insists on including ‘Rosebud’ as a key component of it. Instead, Carringer asserts that ‘Rosebud’ is a MacGuffin with no thematic significance on it’s own, used to develop meaning beyond what it stands for. It is present to create an association with the central symbol of the film, which according to Carringer is the snow globe that shatters in the opening moments of the film. Because ‘Rosebud’ lacks meaning on it’s own, it makes sense that Welles did not provide consistent answers when asked about it’s significance. Instead, he would provide answers that smoothed over whatever criticism the reviewer was presenting. The inconsistency is added support for the idea of ‘Rosebud’ as a MacGuffin.

              ‘Rosebud’ is made to seem important because Rawlston suggests it as the premise of his newsreel, which the audience then interprets as a suggested premise for the film Citizen Kane. In Carringer’s opinion, however, the film revolves around the conflict between this premise, and the opposing one proposed by Thompson that a “word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle—a missing piece.” This conflict is the open question that Citizen Kane explores, and it seems to arrive at a conclusion more in line with Thompson’s idea. The importance that Rawlson places on ‘Rosebud’ creates a reason to interview multiple people and to explore Charles Foster Kane from so many perspectives.

              ‘Rosebud’ is the means by which we can reach the end conclusion about Kane. Carringer says, “The film set up Rosebud as the one to be pursued and noisily constructed a quasi-detection plot around it. But, quietly, all the stories functioned to fill in the meaning of the other clue. The little glass globe, not Rosebud, incorporates the film's essential insight into Kane. It is a crystallization of everything we learn about him-that he was a man continually driven to idealize his experiences as a means of insulating himself from human life.”

Carringer, Robert L. "Rosebud, Dead or Alive: Narrative and Symbolic Structure in Citizen Kane." PMLA (Mar. 1976). JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 29 Nov. 2008. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/461506>.

     In his article, Robert Carringer explores how Citizen Kane's modern narrative structure and film's symbolism are inextricably intertwined. Carringer argues against a simple psychological reading of Rosebud as representative of Kane's lost childhood. Carringer explains that the narrative structure of Citizen Kane is in keeping with a "predominant form of organization in modern narrative" in which there are multiple accounts of one subject, none of which are definitive or wholly reliable (185). He warns the viewer that if one were to see Rosebud in this light, one would undercut the entire reasoning behind Welles' multiple point of view narrative. Instead, Carringer urges the viewer to look at the film's symbolic sequences to find elucidations of the conflicting narrative and the film's overarching message.
      According to Carringer, the snow globe that first appears next to Kane's deathbed is Citizen Kane's central symbol and not Rosebud. More representative of Kane than Rosebud the sled, the snow globe represents the whole Kane, which upon his death shatters into the multifaceted opinions of those who loved and hated him. The shattering of the snow globe becomes symbolic of both Thompson and the viewer's quest in the film: to determine if Kane can ever be understood entirely by examining each of the fragments of his life. In this light, the entire film is encompassed in the symbolic meaning of the snow globe. Yet, the symbol of Rosebud also serves an equally important narrative purpose. In one light, Rosebud serves as the oil that greases the wheels of the plot between each narrator's flashback and "a mechanism for...exploring attitudes and points of view" (192). Rosebud as the burning sled on the other hand serves as a anti-conclusion to the film and forces the viewer to see the importance of the film's narrative structure in the search for meaning in Citizen Kane. Rosebud serves as a "red herring" whose hidden identity fuels the plot. Each exploration of Rosebud serves to elucidate the symbol, which provides a semi-conclusive answer on the identity of Kane, the snow globe, and at the same time to "develop a more fundamental meaning...that there are parts of Kane that are knowable and others that will always remain beyond our interpretation" (192).

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.