Odd man out

Lately I’ve been having great difficulty figuring out what my motivation is. I’ve never cared much about a character’s back story, knowing what he had for breakfast and all that, but I do like to make sense of lines and blocking because I can’t convey something I don’t understand myself. Right now, though, I’m confused.

The stage directions indicate that my character, a self-indulgent hedonist, is supposed to start hitting himself on the head with his own hammer, dare I say his creative hammer, sometimes to the point of drawing blood, but it offers no justification for this. Granted, several of the other characters in the play have been dragging crosses around on their backs, smiling bravely, but self-abuse is completely inconsistent with everything my character has said and done up to now. Now I guess he’ll be killed or exiled or something. Or maybe he’ll just leave. Odd man out, so to speak. Bam, bam.