Struggle with the Invisible: Ferenc Móra: Searching for God

In my essay, I seek to explore some layers of Ferenc Móra’s short story, Searching for God [Istenkeresés]. My main focus is on the characters of the two protagonists of the story: one of them is Priest Kalmár [Kalmár pap], and the other one is the narrator itself. The story is claimed to be autobiographical, and its core is a crucial anecdote of Ferenc Móra’s life-story: when he was 10 years old, he was to attend the nearby school of the Jesuit Order with the assistance of Priest Kalmár, but the pastor had unexpectedly died on the morning of the planned journey’s day. The incident prevented the poor child to become a parson himself. The retrospective story reveals the contradictory, struggling personality of the priest-figure, how he tried to find his peace in God, and how his deeds and thoughts did affect the child’s spiritual development throughout his life. The narrative finds the prefiguration of the priest’s caharacter in the „doubting” Thomas the Apostle.