Throughout the play, Tremblay makes effective use of the soliloquy as means for the characters to express themselves directly. Freed from the perception of their peers, the women are better able to share their innermost thoughts and feelings. Des-Neiges describes her love for a traveling salesman. Rose shares her frustration and bitterness about her marriage. These pivotal moments in the play are allowed to occur because the characters are given the chance to speak more freely than they would in regular life. The audience gets unmediated access to them in these moments. Other famous examples of this technique give a sense of why Tremblay chose to make this such a major feature of the play.
One of the most famous examples of a soliloquy is from Shakespeare's Hamlet:
To be or not to be—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
In this excerpt, Hamlet questions the nature of existence, wondering aloud if being alive is worth the suffering a life always entails. He ponders if death might be preferable to continual pain and struggle. He speaks these lines alone, in the moments before Ophelia enters the scene. Here, it is essential that Hamlet be alone, as the philosophizing he engages in is unfettered by the interference of other characters.
Another example of this technique occurs in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and is spoken by John Proctor, the play's protagonist:
Peace. It is providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now. Aye, naked! And the wind, God’s icy wind, will blow!
He is describing his struggle to be good as well as his hopes and fears about judgment. He wants to live a pure life, but doesn't want to have his whole existence upended. He knows that being "naked" before God means his past sins (his affair with Abigail Williams) will come to light, but also that he cannot overcome them without this divine acknowledgment. Similar to Hamlet, Proctor is given the space in the play for this existential reflection by virtue of the fact that he is alone in this moment, unheard and unseen by other characters. Both examples are indicative of the way in which soliloquies create space for the character outside the usual scope of the plot, allowing them to share thoughts and feelings that would otherwise go unmentioned.
