The subject is destiny ...

... The Old Bunch | Meyer Levin | Destiny's Children | Masterpiece by Joseph Epstein - WSJ.com.

The method is that of realism. Details add up to form character, and character becomes destiny. For example, young Sam Eisen's strain of nonconformity impels him first to leave the boyhood club of friends because of its want of seriousness; later he will drop out of the University of Illinois because of his repugnance toward compulsory ROTC service; the bourgeois spirit of his wife drives him to divorce; and he ends up a lawyer whose career is devoted to idealistic but ultimately empty radical causes.