Written as a prequel to Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton,Stand Up, Nigel Barton deals with the formative years of itsprotagonist, whom Potter describes as "a young man who by accidentand examination has been dragged so far up the education ladder that hefetched up in the medieval enclave called Oxford." Stand Up weavestogether three strands of Barton's life that echo Potter's owndevelopment: his relationship with his working-class family, his schooldays in a rural mining town, and his struggles for acceptance as anOxford undergraduate. Barton, like Potter, has a difficult timeintegrating these aspects of his life: "I travel between twoutterly different worlds." Throughout this work, Potter traversesalternate worlds-the past and present, the conscious and thesubconscious. He experiments with dramatic techniques to convey thequality of memory and how past events are colored by present attitudes.Adult actors play children's parts in the grade-school scenes so thatthere is an immediate recognition in the youthful Barton of what he hasbecome. By avoiding conventional flashbacks, Potter constructed"swiftly moving fragments" so that the "present was notthe norm out of which one lurched cumbrously back into previoustimes."