At its core, Beneath offers a scathing critique of human nature, positing that even in the aftermath of an apocalyptic catastrophe, people will inevitably build societies that recreate the age-old systems of power, class, and inequality. Within the world of the novel, humanity’s last outpost, Haven, is rigidly stratified, prioritizing each person’s perceived value as a worker over their intrinsic humanity. Through its sector-based society and callous “health score” ratings, Haven creates a new form of social currency and delivers the unequivocal message that those who are physically unable to contribute have no right to live. As the novel progresses, Sasha and her companions must decide whether to accept or fight back against this bleak view of existence, and their various conflicts suggest that the human drive to establish hierarchy is deeply embedded in the struggle for survival.

Haven’s broader social hierarchy is immediately established through Sasha’s cynical perspective as she reflects on the bunker’s various social systems. Her world is divided into five sectors—the Force, the Hospital Ward, the Kitchens, Sanitation, and Expansion—and every citizen is assigned a role that determines their status and their access to Haven’s ever-dwindling resources. This stratification is visually enforced by the color-coded identification bands that everyone is compelled to wear, a practice that wordlessly perpetuates Haven’s bleak version of classism as humanity’s last survivors use the bands to judge one another’s inherent “worth” at a glance. The disparity between the various factions is reflected in their living conditions; members of the Force enjoy private quarters with their own shower, while those in Expansion and Sanitation live in “notoriously dirty and overcrowded” spaces (16). This system creates a clear class divide where someone’s sector dictates their job, their quality of life, and their likelihood of long-term survival.

The systemic cruelty of Haven is even more forcefully demonstrated by the callous health-score system that assigns each person a quantitative value. Described as Haven’s “only currency,” the health score dictates who is worthy of receiving medical care, and in an extremist parallel to real-world American health insurance, benefits are most accessible to those who have less need of medical care. The Ward’s official policy is to cease treatment for patients with low scores or those who fail to recover quickly, preserving resources for those deemed more valuable to the community’s survival. Individuals with persistently low scores are “discarded to Sanitation and forgotten” (18), effectively removed from society. This cruel calculus creates a culture of fear, forcing people to view illness as a dangerous mark of weakness that can signal the beginning of the end for an individual’s survival.

Against this bleak backdrop, small acts of rebellion highlight the system’s inherent cruelty and champion a more compassionate, human-centric morality. From the very beginning, Sasha secretly works to protect Tristian’s team by favorably altering their health scores in the wake of their injuries. Her deliberate subversion of the rules reveals her core humanitarian values and foreshadows the greater role she will play in working to overcome the system’s cold logic. Even before this, her commitment to sitting with dying, low-score patients in the Ward earns her the moniker “Death’s Angel” and acts as a wordless form of protest against Haven’s unfeeling social norms. By offering comfort to those the system has deemed disposable, she safeguards their dignity and honors their lives. Her choices stand in stark contrast to Haven’s official ideology and suggests that true humanity is found in defying the oppressive systems of power that contribute to humanity’s collective misery.