Colonialism and cultural disruption
Achebe shows colonisation as a slow, multi-stage process rather than a single catastrophe. Missionaries arrive with songs, then build churches, then administer courts, then call soldiers. By the time Umuofia perceives the threat clearly, the clan has already "fallen apart" from within. The novel refuses two extremes: it neither romanticises pre-colonial Igbo society nor exonerates the colonisers.
Key moments: Mr Brown’s conversations with Akunna; the destruction of the church; the killing of the court messenger; the final paragraph.
”He has put a knife on the things that held us together…” - Obierika