Brave New World alludes to Shakespeare's The Tempest multiple times, doing so with increasing irony and bitterness as John the Savage's perspective on the high-tech World State darkens.

The major parallel Huxley draws is between Miranda in The Tempest and John. Both have grown to young adulthood marooned far away from the culture of their parents. Each is raised in an alien environment by a single parent who holds on to memories of and longings for the world left behind. Prospero longs to get revenge on those who wronged him. Linda simply wants to return to a society that she finds in every way superior to the one she is trapped in.

More particularly, both John and Miranda are initially astonished when they first see evidence of the world they have been separated from for so many years. The phrase "brave new world" that gives Huxley's book its title comes from Miranda's amazed exclamation in act 5, scene 1 when she sees the group of shipwrecked men together for the first time:

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!

John's first exclamation of "O brave new world" about the World State is as sincere as Miranda's. After all, his mother has done nothing but tell him all his life about its wonders. He looks forward eagerly to visiting this new world.

However, as he sees the reality of the degraded, superficial lives in this culture, with its dozens of identical twins, its people relying on soma and pornographic feelies to get by, and its complete lack of depth and passion to life, his comment "O brave new world" becomes more ironic. For example, when faced with the multitude of grotesque identical Deltas clamoring for their soma as his mother is dying, John's words quoting Miranda have become bitter and disillusioned.