65 pages • 2 hours read
Matt DinnimanDungeon Crawler Carl
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Donut’s Crown
Princess Donut’s crown symbolizes the terrible decisions that the dungeon forces its crawlers to make. The crown also draws attention to Donut’s shift from self-centeredness to a team-based approach. Initially, Donut makes the rash decision to wear the crown without reading about its capabilities, and she often acts without thinking about the consequences. By the end of the novel, however, Donut is well aware that her brash actions impact Carl as well as herself, and she proves that she cares about Carl more than she cares about her own vanity.
Throughout the narrative, Carl repeatedly contemplates the crown and its implications:
I looked at Donut’s small, jeweled tiara… Because she’d put it on, she’d become a royal member of ‘The Blood Sultanate.’ We’d only get off the ninth floor if all other members of the family were killed, including the Sultan himself. I had no idea what any of that meant (377).
Because of Donut’s rash action, Carl knows that on Level 9, he will need to make a decision as to whether to abandon Donut for his own safety, or to remain true to their partnership and help her to kill all the members of the Blood Sultanate family. If he does the latter, he may be faced with killing innocent people, but if he abandons Donut, she will most likely die.
The crown also symbolizes a potential fracture in Donut and Carl’s partnership, and Donut herself is aware of this tension. When she confronts him about the issue, Carl does not quite manage to reassure her, and it is clear that he has not made a decision about whether to stay with Donut on Level 9. However, given Carl’s conscientious approach to protecting others, abandoning Donut to save himself would be quite out of character. Ultimately, the crown represents a future conflict that could cost Donut and Carl their lives, and it also shows Donut’s character growth.
Population Ticker
In every safe room, there is a population ticker that counts down the total number of crawlers still alive in the dungeon. Even in the room that should be “safe,” crawlers are constantly reminded of the presence of death all around them. When the show airs, it prominently features the death toll, and the population ticker therefore becomes a constant symbol of the showrunners’ unnecessary cruelty. For those in charge, the people dying are nothing more than entertainment, but Carl has a very different reaction to the constantly decreasing numbers. Near the end of the novel, he realizes, “We’d gone below one million, and I hadn’t noticed. For every person that ticked away, I felt I was losing a part of myself, a part of my humanity” (390). The scope of the brutality is unfathomable to Carl, and he struggles to comprehend that the first two levels have killed well over 10 million people. The death toll is worse than previous seasons of the show, which also points to the added danger within this version of the game. The Borant Corporation is being pressured by its government to finish the season quickly, so the game itself becomes increasingly lethal. Not only are millions being killed, but the show runners are attempting to speed up the death rate in order to collect the money at the end of the show.
Carl’s Pedicure Kit
Carl’s magical pedicure kit symbolizes the culmination of the AI’s obsession with feet; this quirky detail implies that the AI has more sentience than the Borant Corporation realizes. Carl becomes aware of the AI’s foot fixation early in the narrative. He notes, “It seemed like the AI—or whatever it was that controlled the game messages—really did have some sort of foot fetish. It was fucking weird,” (77). When Carl kills a goblin with his bare feet, the AI begins incentivizing him to remain barefoot. While he gets an advantage while fighting, the AI also proves to be intensely interested in his feet. When he fights in a boss battle, he earns an achievement afterward, and the whimsical description runs thus: “New achievement! This Little Piggy Went to Market! Oh, yeah, baby. You have killed more than five opponents during boss battles using your bare feet. You are making daddy very, very happy” (255).
While Carl does not like this fixation on his feet, these unexpected advantages also allow him and Donut to better survive the dungeon’s challenges. Ultimately, Carl receives a pedicure kit that increases his damage and protection if he remains barefoot and uses it. The AI’s interest in Carl’s feet also reveals that the AI itself is not a purely neutral entity. It controls the dungeon and is—theoretically at least—controlled by the Borant Corporation. However, the narrative implies that the AI itself is sentient and could have its own ulterior motives. Ultimately, Carl plays along with the AI’s favoritism because he might gain a crucial advantage for his survival.
