To me the song is more about a father referring his anger at being trodden on at work into treading on his own son when he comes home, sung from the son's perspective. Sick of being the slave at work to his bosses (and always doing what he gets told to do, without question), he hypocritically acts the same way towards his own son, giving him no help but demanding everything.
So the father is both master and slave, finding it hard to cope with the dual responsibilities of work and home. The father may see his "success" as being down entirely to his own hard work and so uses the tough love approach to the son, not giving him any help/money to start on his way in the world at all being "I never got that when I was young", unfortunately this is leading to a downward spiral in the son.
The Abraham line refers to his own father's attitude. Abraham's son worked hard for his father, and Abraham loved his son, but as soon as Abraham's master (God) ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham was willing to do this - sacrificing the ones he loves to appease those above him.
"Friends and Romans" is a line from Shakespeare's Julias Ceasar, where Mark Anthony turns the mob (the proletariat) against the upper class conspirators. This could be taken as a call to arms (like a lot of the American-based phrases mentioned above) to change the way that the system works. The song suggests that the only way to make it in America (the pursuit of happyness) is to step on those below you, forget about them and schmooze with those above you. However the narrator still retains a glimmer of hope in the end "I can still see the stars" (although this could be taken more literally to mean that in prison he can literally see stars at night)
To me the song is more about a father referring his anger at being trodden on at work into treading on his own son when he comes home, sung from the son's perspective. Sick of being the slave at work to his bosses (and always doing what he gets told to do, without question), he hypocritically acts the same way towards his own son, giving him no help but demanding everything.
So the father is both master and slave, finding it hard to cope with the dual responsibilities of work and home. The father may see his "success" as being down entirely to his own hard work and so uses the tough love approach to the son, not giving him any help/money to start on his way in the world at all being "I never got that when I was young", unfortunately this is leading to a downward spiral in the son.
The Abraham line refers to his own father's attitude. Abraham's son worked hard for his father, and Abraham loved his son, but as soon as Abraham's master (God) ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham was willing to do this - sacrificing the ones he loves to appease those above him.
"Friends and Romans" is a line from Shakespeare's Julias Ceasar, where Mark Anthony turns the mob (the proletariat) against the upper class conspirators. This could be taken as a call to arms (like a lot of the American-based phrases mentioned above) to change the way that the system works. The song suggests that the only way to make it in America (the pursuit of happyness) is to step on those below you, forget about them and schmooze with those above you. However the narrator still retains a glimmer of hope in the end "I can still see the stars" (although this could be taken more literally to mean that in prison he can literally see stars at night)