Where are each of the five senses addressed/appealed to in To Kill a Mockingbird?

The five senses--sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste--are the foundations upon which all good imagery is built. Authors like Harper Lee use them usually during descriptions of different settings and characters, but they can also be found in dialogue as people experience new and exciting things. Such is the case in this story as Lee describes life through a little girl's eyes.

Sight - One of the biggest mysteries in the novel is who lives in the decrepit old house in the neighborhood. Lee paints a great picture in the following passage:

"The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away . . . [and] johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance" (8).

Notice the mix of colors and other specific adjectives used to describe different pieces of the lot. This is a perfect visual!

Sound - Speaking of the Radley place, part of the lore is that a 33 year-old Boo Radley stabbed his father one day with a pair of scissors. Scout explains,

"Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all, but when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the livingroom, cutting up the Tribune" (11).

Lee makes it easy to picture an old woman running out into the street screaming for her life in a quiet lazy town. This image would certainly scare little children with images of screaming in their heads. 

Touch/Physical Feeling - After the stabbing incident, the sheriff decides to lock Boo in the courthouse because the jail would be too dangerous for him. But they eventually move him back home because of the following:

". . . some of the town council told Mr. Radley that if he didn't take Boo back, Boo would die of mold from the damp" (11).

The image of "mold" and "damp" covers sight and touch because seeing and feeling mold in an old damp, and probably cold, basement doesn't make one feel very comfortable. 

Smell - A fun image about smell is when Dill stops to analyze the Radley place and the following discussion emerges:

"We had strolled to the front year, where DIll stood looking down the street at the dreary face of the Radley Place. 'I--smell--death,' he said. 'I do mean it,' he said, when I told him to shut up.

'You mean when somebody's dyin' you can smell it?'

'No, I mean I can smell somebody an' tell if they're gonna die" (36).

This is a fun passage because death does smell, but these kids probably don't know what that really is or means.

Taste - For the first snowfall that Scout experiences, she goes out and catches a flake on her tongue:

"I stuck out my tongue and caught a fat flake. It burned.

'Jem, it's hot!'

'No it ain't, it's so cold it burns'" (65).

Imagery is a great way to convey human qualities to textual descriptions. This helps readers to identify  with the story on a deeper level because they have to pull from personal experience to comprehend what characters are experiencing. Luckily, Lee is one of the best at accomplishing this task.