Thoughts on chapter skulls in Nona [Discussion]
So I'm almost through with my first read of Nona (Just finished >!John 1:20!< so about 50-ish pages till the end of the story) and something I've been thinking about is the skull placement in each chapter. Obviously the >!John chapters lack those skulls!<, which is intriguing enough in it's own right but with an explanation that makes a lot of sense, but the thing I find most interesting is that Muir decided to utilize the cracked >!skulls from Harrow!< at certain points as well.
Now in Harrow those made a lot of sense and were used in a very specific way, but that context no longer applies in this book. Even reading through the chapters that utilize the broken skulls, they seem mostly there for style points or because they thought the other skulls would be too boring. There's really only one case I can think of where it would make sense >!(the chapter where Nona and Judith talk on top of the bus)!< but that obviously alters the context from how they appeared in Harrow (unless there's a reveal that >!Nona was in the River the whole time or something!< but I really doubt that that's the case).
There's already a lot of interesting iconography with the chapter headings in Nona (it being the only book so far to have more headings than just the standard skulls) but I'd love to hear some thoughts about what people think the point of including >!the cracked skulls!< might have been.