The Philadelphia Phoenix, the train aboard which the events of With a Vengeance take place, serves as a symbol of power throughout the novel. In 1937, the Union Atlantic railroad company debuted the Phoenix as a luxury train experience. The Phoenix was designed by Judd at Arthur’s command, but Arthur took the credit for the Phoenix because he had the power to do so as the owner of Union Atlantic. Arthur told Judd he wanted a train that both looked and moved “like liquid mercury,” and Judd told Arthur he could design it (58). Though Judd made the Phoenix, it was Arthur’s idea, and the power remained with Arthur. After 1942, however, the Phoenix changed hands. After Kenneth’s devious plot to destroy Arthur culminated in Arthur’s murder, Kenneth bought Union Atlantic, and the Phoenix became his.

Kenneth maintains his power over the Phoenix even in 1954. Anna thinks that she obtains control over the Phoenix when she pays off the train’s employees and bribes the train’s engineer to keep the train going without stopping until Chicago. However, Anna does not realize that her control is superficial. Though the train seems empty except for Anna, Seamus, and the conspirators, Kenneth’s power over the situation remains. Kenneth secretly sends the engineer away and drives the train himself. Though Anna thinks she’s obtaining justice, the situation she concocts remains under Kenneth’s thumb, with Kenneth even thanking her for inadvertently helping take out the co-conspirators that could incriminate him. Anna, however, takes the power back, holding Kenneth at gunpoint and forcing him to drive the Phoenix the rest of the way to Chicago where the FBI waits to arrest him. Though Kenneth thinks he can exert his power over Anna, she claims the power she previously thought she had in earnest, taking power away from the man who destroyed her family.

Ultimately, the Phoenix symbolizes the shifting but contested nature of power. At first, it embodies Arthur’s dominance, then Kenneth’s corruption, and finally Anna’s reclamation of agency. Because it is both a literal vehicle and a stage for betrayal, justice, and confrontation, the train becomes a moving metaphor for who controls the direction of the story. By the end, Anna’s ability to force Kenneth to drive the Phoenix toward his downfall makes the train not just a setting but a living emblem of power taken back from men who abused it.