- Tim the Enchanter is both a Scottish send-up and a warning device. So he’s really not supposed to be all that well-formed a personality (or funny). Yet he is both! What about those supposedly secondary characters or ideas and how they seem to linger in our memory?
- Tim is gruff and decided, but when asked his name, he seems unsure. However humor functions, there’s something decidedly hilarious in his response!
- Hyperbole and warnings that go unheeded. What educational use can we make of these canaries in the coal mines, these Cassandra figures such as Tim the Enchanter? More pointedly, if we are trying to emphasize something before learners, how can we avoid becoming Tim, a caricature of warning? Now there is a real question folded into this scene.