Makayla Estep

Ms. Weaver
Rhetoric 101
November 13th, 2014

The Mousetrap

The advertisement that I have chosen to do a rhetorical analysis on is the advertisement

for Nolans Cheddar. It starts off with On Top of the World by The Carpenters playing in the
background while a cute house mouse emerges from his hole and sniffs out some cheese placed
on a mousetrap. The trap suddenly snaps and The End by The Doors begins to play as the
mouse is seen breathing heavily, taking its last breaths under the bar of the trap. Suddenly, the
music changes to Eye of the Tiger by Survivor and the mouse begins to bench press the trap
bar across his chest. The mouses head begins to beat with the music and the screen fades to the
mouse standing beside a block of cheese with the words: Nolans Cheddar Seriously Strong.
The advertisement was for strong cheddar cheese.
The rhetors of this advertisement were obviously the cheese company. Broadcasting
Nolans Cheddar right across the screen gives that one away. However, there might have been
multiple rhetors in this advertisement. Although he didnt speak words, he certainly spoke in
actions. The mouse in the advertisement proved to the audience that no matter what obstacles
come in his way to the desired cheese, he will get that cheese. No sworn mortal enemy of the
entire mice population can withstand the power of the mouse who is going for Nolans Cheddar
Cheese. He is the companys spokesperson without even uttering a single word.

The audience is divided into two categories: immediate and mediate. Immediate
audiences would be to not just people who can buy the cheese, but people who actually like to
eat the dairy product. Its the people who watch this commercial and think to themselves that if a
little mouse desires that cheese so much, then a sophisticated human should go out and try it. The
mediate audience is on a much broader spectrum. When this commercial aired, millions of
people, even ones who didnt like cheese, were interested in this commercial because of the
abruptness and surprise elements that it had to offer. Human rights activists blew up as a reaction
to this commercial because it seemed that it wasnt appropriate for a mouse to be pinned in a
mouse trap on television. People who in general enjoy a good commercial were also skyrocketing the number of views. Lastly, the most random type of mediate audience is a college
student looking for an advertisement to rhetorically analyze in an essay for her rhetoric 101 class.
Making the commercial so desirable to watch and opening up to the mediate audience really
helped in getting their advertisement everywhere and out to as many people as possible. That
would be the goal of all advertisement rhetors, to get the message as far out as possible to all
audiences, regardless of cause to watch it; in other words, they want to make it trend.
Exigence is a very lengthy part of rhetorical analysis. It contains three questions: What is
this discourse community about? Why is the discourse community needed? And what is the
discourse community trying to accomplish? To answer the first question, this discourse
community is about cheese. The company that has put out this commercial is a cheese based
company. This discourse community is needed to help dairy farmers and to advertise certain
cheeses that the public would want. Its to make cheese seem like something other than cheese,
give the public a more interesting perspective. This translates into the third question of exigence:
what is the discourse community trying to accomplish? The community is attempting to give the

public a very entertaining spiel about how strong a cheese is. They are trying to advertise how a
product tastes and smells and they executed it effectively by having the mouse bench press the
mousetrap in order to get the cheese, even though he was near death.
The last major part of rhetorical analysis is rhetorical constraints. These are defined by
Llyod Bitzer as the features of the audiences- and perhaps the speakers writers- frames of
mind, belief systems, and ways of life that lead the audience to accept the speakers or writers
ideas and to act upon the exigence. Basically he is saying that rhetorical constraints are what the
audience brings to the text to make connections to their personal lives. The rhetorical constraints
in this advertisement would be that the audience already knows that mice love cheese and the
sworn enemies of mice are mousetraps, especially when mice are in the house. The audience also
knows that mousetraps kill mice and when one gets near the other, the audience automatically
gets nervous. When the snap occurs in the advertisement, everyones mouths automatically drop
in horror and disbelief. This action brings out the pathos of persuasion. An emotional response to
feel something for that mouse lying on the trap, pinned down trying to get some cheese. People
are always compassionate and the rhetors know that; therefore they will play off of the emotionswhich in this case is compassion- of the audience in order to persuade them more towards their
product.
The rhetors of this advertisement certainly played off of the pathos tatic of persuasion.
They used three different songs and all of them produced an emotion that was compatible to
what was being displayed on the screen. At the beginning of the commercial On Top of the
World by The Carpenters was playing as the cute mouse stuck its tiny whiskers and head out of
his mouse hole. As he began to explore and target the cheese the music still played, giving the
audience the feeling of peace and happiness that the little mouse found the cheese and his day

was going good. All of the sudden the audience hears a snap and The End by The Doors
begins to play as the mouse labors in its breathing under the mousetrap bar. The audience feels
this sadness immediately rush over them. The music makes this advertisement morose even with
the visual already making the audience unhappy. Abruptly Eye of the Tiger by Survivor starts
to play and the mouse picks his head up and begins to bench press the bar that is constricting it.
This gives the allusion that the mouse is powering through and is seriously strong, making the
audience very cheerful and overjoyed that the mouse will survive. The music plays a significant
role in the pathos tactic of persuasion making it more personal and using the audiences
constraints to ossify their argument that this type of cheese is the best.
As a connection to the audiences constraints and personal connections, the mousetrap
represents so many different points, to me. It reminds me of act II, scene III in Hamlet, Hamlet
attempts to catch his uncle Claudius, who murdered his father to become king, to confess his sin.
He uses a device he conjures up and describes it as the mousetrap. He has players come in to the
palace and put on a play, recreating what Claudius had done to his brother, in attempt to try and
catch the mouse Claudius. This is a connection to the audience, although the audience hasnt
done anything as near as horrible as Claudius. The company is Hamlet and they are putting a
mousetrap out to try to catch the audience into buying their type of cheese. Nothing comes more
perfectly than to say the in the actual advertisement, the company uses a literal mouse and
mousetrap to get their point across. The rhetors of this text were pure genius.
I do believe that the company has gotten its intended purpose across. They want to sell an
image of the cheese to be seriously strong and they were successful in that. They show a
mouse bench pressing a mousetrap in order to get some of their product. The company played off
of the audiences constraints, and the pathos tactic of persuasion to create an effective and

memorable advertisement. However, Im not entirely convinced that the company meant to make
mouse-ception with their advertisement. The fact that there is a Russian nesting doll placed
into this paradox of mice and mousetraps is pure Einstein.