5. Mark Twain uses this episode to introduce the reader to the theme of hypocrisy which is one of the major themes of this novel. People in Huckleberry’s time were not aware of the bad affects of smoking and so he saw it as a pleasant and harmless pastime. Hypocrisy the act of pretending to have beliefs , opinions , virtues , feelings , qualities ,or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy is thus a kind of lie . Hypocrisy may come from a desire to hide from others actual motives or feelings. From Wikipedia.org