Abstract:

Ernest Miller Hemingway, an American novelist, is known as spiritual monument of the American nation. The Old Man and the Sea is generally regarded as one of his masterpieces and has profound practical significance and has left valuable spiritual property for American literature. The novel describes Santiago, an old man, who fought with the huge marlin and shark alone. Mr. Fool Wants to Move the Mountain is a widely-known Chinese fable. It described that the character Yu Gong gathered his family members together to move two high mountains in front of the house to make them convenient to access. The two works are produced in different times, different nationalities, different cultural background, but to some extent, they reflect the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western culture. This thesis traces to the reasons for the differences between Western individualism and Chinese collectivism by comparing and analyzing the leading characters of the two works——Santiago and Yu Gong. In addition, the thesis helps us find the appropriate ways to treat the differences between individualism and collectivism.

Key words: individualism；collectivism；cultural difference

摘要：

欧内斯特·米勒·海明威，美国小说家，一生创作了许多经典作品，为美国文学留下了宝贵的精神财产,被称为“美利坚民族的精神丰碑”。《老人与海》是其代表作之一，具有深刻的现实意义,讲述了一位老人桑地亚哥独自与大马林鱼和鲨鱼对抗的故事。《愚公移山》是中国家喻户晓的寓言故事，讲述了愚公为了人们进出方便，和儿孙齐心协力地搬走挡在门口的两座大山的故事。两部作品产生于不同的时代、不同的国度、不同的文化背景，某种程度上体现了中西方文化的相似性和差异性。本文通过对两部文学作品的主人公：愚公和桑地亚哥进行对比和分析，对西方的个体主义与中国的集体主义的差异追根溯源。此外，本文帮助我们得出对待个人主义和集体主义差异的正确方法。

关键词：个体主义；集体主义；文化差异

Introduction
Ernest Miller Hemingway, an American novelist, is known as spiritual monument of the American nation. The Old Man and the Sea is regarded as one of his masterpiece and it has profound practical significance and has left valuable spiritual property for American literature. The novel describes Santiago, an old man, who fished alone in the remote seas. After he didn’t catch any fish during eighty-four days and he was ridiculed by many people, he finally caught a big marlin. However, this marlin was too huge and dragged the old man’s small fishing boat to escape for three days on the sea. At last, the marlin was utterly worn out and killed and tied to the side of the boat by Santiago. Unfortunately, he was attacked by shark constantly on his way back. When he arrived at the port, the big marlin was only left with head, tail and great long white spine. Despite all this, the old man never gave up and faced up to all the difficulties alone.