Characters

The main character of the short story “Goldhawk” by Katherine Magyarody is Dinara Akhmatova, and the narration follows her point of view. Dinara’s co-workers (Sergei, Leroy, Mo, Samy, etc.) are secondary characters.

Dinara Akhmatova

Dinara is a computer programmer who has worked for a North American company for ten years (l. 2). In her work, she focuses on product development (l. 7). She is highly educated, as she can understand Hebrew as well as English (ll. 74-75), and has “studied the stars at a national institute” (l. 42) before becoming a computer programmer. Dinara’s age is not directly stated, but she has three children who are old enough to attend university (l. 118), and one of Dinara’s co-workers thinks of her as “someone his mother’s age” (l. 13). Therefore, we can assume that Dinara is in her late 40s or in her 50s.

Outer characterisation

Dinara is described as “slight of body and flexible of mind” (l. 6). Her features and physique are described in detail: “She wore dangling silver earrings below her short dark hair. She was soft-spoken and her voice was high” (ll. 21-23). The narration also notes that: “Her hair was as black as her eyes. If someone looked closely (…) they might have seen fine lines around her eyes, across her forehead, connecting the corners of her nostrils to the tips of her smiling lips” (ll. 28-30). She is also described in comparison with her colleagues: “In a company of c...