Citizen Kane ending explained

What happens

Thompson gives up, concluding no single word could explain a man. Only you see the answer: workers at Xanadu burn a child's sled, and its painted name, Rosebud, appears in the flames. Kane's secret was a lost childhood.

The last image

The sled's painted name, Rosebud, curls and blackens in the furnace as the workers throw it on the fire.

Two readings

1 · Childhood as the keyThe sled stands for the boy sent away from his mother, and Kane's grasping for possessions replaced the love he lost.

2 · An answer that explains nothingSeeing the sled gives you a fact, not an understanding, and Kane remains a man no one could fully know.

What it says

Welles gives you the answer the reporter never finds, then shows how little it settles. The ending says a life can't be reduced to one explanation, and that biography, however thorough, always misses the person.