Using Questions As A Form of Character Development

"Could you be expected to behave as a thinking human being when your hand was being impaled on red-hot darning needles?"

That question is brilliant! Can't you feel the angst, the impossibility, the urgency to escape the heat. That question is one of two that Stephen King's character Jack Torrance asks himself in The Shining, as he tries to question how could resist alcohol and his demons from taking over. 

Here's the next question:

"Could you be expected to live in the love of your nearest and dearest when the brown, furious cloud rose out of the hole in the fabric of things (the fabric you thought was so innocent) and arrived straight at you?"

There is so much anger, so much helplessness and a surrendering of perceived power that spits out of these type of questions. In fact, in the end, they are rhetorical in nature, and yet, what an effective way to expose a character to his readers.