FATE AND FREE WILL A series of seemingly inevitable events in The Call of the Wild underscore the notion of destiny. Is Buck destined to leave his life of comfort and become a creature of the wild? That is the big question, of course, but there are other smaller issues of fate that work together to make this a theme in the novel. Are foolish men bound to die in the frozen terrain of the North? Are two alpha dogs destined to fight one another to the death? While The Call of the Wild does not question the idea that we all have free will to make choices, it does suggest that certain foreseeable events simply have to occur – it is the natural order.
the fall ice was very thin, and where there was swift water, there was no ice at all. (2.19)
London presents certain events, like falling through the ice, as inevitable.