The major conflict in Hard Times pits Fact against Fancy; but Dickens ascribes two meanings to Fancy: imaginative play and fellow feeling. Each is directed separately against Fact: (1) The narrative personality combines images of life (horses, flowers, the sun, and fire) with images of lifelessness (pits, destructive violence, artificiality) in complex relationships, creating an impressive model of a highly fused, interdependent world, which contradicts the disjointed world of Gradgrindian Fact. (2) The virtuous characters employ fellow feeling to soften ills caused by Fact. But the novel does not show the 'components of Fancy to be coordinate, as Dickens implies. In practice, imaginative play provides a protective atmosphere of delusion, within which fellow feeling is supposed to grow to strength. Imagination fortifies innocence against the sordid and bad aspects of reality. Thus Dickens seems uncertain whether to work toward a coherent, interdependent world, or toward a scattering of islands of innocence—whether to employ imaginative play in building bridges to extend fellow feeling, or in building buffers to protect innocence. The result of his double advocacy is a series of probably unconscious compromises. Because the forces of Fancy are so divided, so fettered, the book's alternative to the Facts of Gradgrind is not so clear and attractive as one could wish.