In an attempt to make his readers picture the deep and wide expanses that exist between the islands, the poet employs imagery in order to describe the distance and distrust that exists between people. The entire poem of Arnold represents an extended metaphor that compares the desperation and loneliness that each individual feels to the solitary confinement of islands from larger bodies of land. From the first stanza of the poem, an extended metaphor is set up; as the poet compares humans to islands to address his point on isolation. In the first stanza of Arnold’s poem, the poet proposes by this extended metaphor how distant people are from one another. The narrator details how he senses loneliness and how deserted the people are from one another; as this is exactly similar to how the islands in the sea are. The beginning of the poem seems to diffuse a feeling of anguish, seclusion, and solitude which allows the reader to touch on the fact of how people are detached from each other. The poet chooses his words in a very specific manner to address his point of view on isolation; this is to say that certain words that were used by the poet shed the light on the same theme. For instances, the words echoing, shoreless, endless, and alone are included in an attempt to give the reader a sort of empty feelings that allow him to feel the deepness of the issue of isolation. The poet explains how the real life at his time is isolated like an island that is standing alone in the sea.