Steve the Owl's Blog

Welcome to the third part of my series on the lessons of Citizen Kane. Today, I will talk about one of the key lessons in terms of personal development from this movie. While this is a movie that has a generally downward progression, there is still a key lesson that can be learned.

Declaration of Principles

One of the key elements of foreshadowing early in the movie comes just after Charles Foster Kane takes control of the New York Daily Inquirer. In the movie, it is a struggling daily paper that Kane’s guardian and executor of his fortune foreclosed. Kane decides that he wants to try to run the newspaper, and he brings his best friend, Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), who comes with Kane to work as a dramatic critic. Early in the movie, Kane is looking for something to make his paper unique, and he finally comes up with his answer: My Declaration of Principles. In the scene, he promises to give the news accurately and fairly, and to be a champion for the working man.

Jed Leland, however, warned Kane that he shouldn’t make promises unless he intends to keep them. Kane assures him that these would be kept. Leland serves as a moral compass, and he is my favorite character in the movie. At one point, Kane has a party celebrating the Inquirer‘s ranking as the highest-circulated paper in New York and buying all of the staff of the New York Chronicle. In the middle of the party, Kane is celebrating, and Leland is clearly worried. When Mr. Bernstein asks why, Leland explains that it is because he wonders whether or not Kane is keeping his principles, and whether or not the Chronicle reporters are really dedicated to the policies of Kane, or whether they will change him without him even knowing it.

The Hard Lessons of Principles

(NOTE: This part of the post contains spoilers. If you want to avoid them, please scroll to the end of the post.)

The next major point in the relationship between Kane and Leland comes 18 years later in 1916, when Charles Foster Kane ran for governor against entrenched political boss Jim W. Gettys. Leland is the first character to give a speech for the Kane campaign, calling him “that fighting liberal” and the man to clean up after the corruption of the Gettys Administration. By the end of the campaign, Kane is the heavy favorite. However, Leland seems to hold back his enthusiasm at the beginning of the speech, only giving in to the thrill of the crowd later.

While Kane is the heavy favorite, Gettys is not licked yet. Instead, he knows that Kane has been visiting a young girl, and whether there was an inappropriate relationship or not (which is somewhat vague in the movie), it certainly looked bad, and a story is planted about them. After the election, Leland tells him that he talks about the people as if he owns them, and he says that he wants to move to Chicago because he doesn’t want to be there after the election.

Then, when Kane is with his second wife, she premieres the Chicago Opera House. The rest of the reporters for the Chicago Inquirer give her positive reviews, but Leland is passed out in the back room. Kane and Mr. Bernstein walk in, and they see that he has started to write a bad review. Kane finishes the review Leland wanted to write, and fired him.

In another flashback, we find out that Leland was given a $25,000 severance check (Keep in mind that this part of the story took place in the 1920′s, so this was a substantial amount of money.), which Leland delivers to him ripped up with the Declaration of Principles. Kane tears up the Declaration of Principles.

The Lesson

This part of the movie shows the beginning of the deterioration of Kane’s life. However, the real point to me is what that moment says about Jed Leland, and about people in real life. Leland did the right thing. He went into the newspaper business as something that is described early in the movie as somewhat of a “college boy prank.” However, Leland is really an idealist at heart with unshakeable principles.

His true loyalty to the movie isn’t to Charles Foster Kane, or to himself, but to principles. While there, he is the one who always worries when principles are at risk, and he is willing to sacrifice in order to maintain his principles when they are challenged. When he is shown later in the movie, he is someone of a genial temperament who is at piece with the decisions he made in his life. So, no matter what it is that you want to do in life, never forget your own Declaration of Principles, but remember to hold to them like Jed Leland, not Charles Foster Kane.

One of the most interesting concepts in self-help books (or, as some have termed it, “success literature”) is the question of principle vs. behavior. There are some who argue that outside behavior eventually determines inside beliefs. However, Stephen R. Covey takes the opposite approach in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Farms vs. School

Covey argues that the difference between behavior-based advice and principle-based advice is similar to that of what is needed for success in a farm and what is needed for success in school. He argues that the genre of self-help/success literature took a turn when society became more industrialized and school took a larger importance. Because farms required nurturing and delayed gratification, this instilled patience in those who worked on farms, and this is why they are much more willing to look at changing their attitudes and outlook on life in order to achieve success.

However, while teachers and professors repeatedly argue against it, the common method of learning for school is the cram session. I admit that I am also sometimes guilty of that. (However, at the grad school level, there aren’t many tests any more, so I admit to hammering out major papers in a matter of a few days unless the professor structures the assignment so that there are checkpoints to go through along the way.) Often, this works for us, because we really only need the knowledge for one day in order to succeed on a test. Of course, this does not work for crops, which need daily attention.

Looking at the Habits

I think that there is a lot to be said for the seven habits that Covey mentions. I have known people who have an automatic reaction every time someone’s name is mentioned or some event happens, much like Marty McFly in Back to the Future when someone calls him a chicken. While I probably wouldn’t have used the example of someone going through the Holocaust to demonstrate why someone should be pro-active rather than reactive, I can understand his intention. For me, the most important habit to learn (and one that I am, if I am honest with myself and you, the reader, still learning) was the second habit on time management. (I am currently reading a book on time management that will be the subject of an upcoming installment of Steve’s Book Club.) I know that there are times when I tend to go from one crisis or deadline to another. However, the idea that it is the second quadrant (non-urgent and important) and not the first (urgent and important) that should constitute the bulk of my time. Covey’s argument is that people who spend most of their time in the first quadrant spend a lot of down time doing unimportant things that aren’t urgent, and I know that when I am in crisis mode, and the crisis is over, I just want to sit in front of the TV watching the most light thing I can find. However, if I would focus on the skills of the second quadrant, I could have more time to but things into a better balance.

The seventh habit is one that Covey calls “rounding the saw.” This means that these are principles that must always be examined and refined as necessary. This is something that I think is important to realize for all of us. We cannot look at times of triumph and think that we have everything down. We can, and should, always work to become better, and that is why I think this book has stood the test of time.