Janine is the "good" girl in many respects so when it appears that she has broken through and found a way to bring meaning into her life Offred gets caught up in the idea that if she could just conceive everything would be fine. It's a classic example of how a simple reward of any sort can distract one's self from the greater problems and cause them to be content with what is really a terrible thing. After Janine bears her child, Offred " holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby" (127; ch.21). She sees Janine as her roadmap to a complacent form of bliss, a place where she can finally find purpose, but Janine ends up being far from a savior. The baby did not make it. It " passed through Janine on its way to somewhere else" (214;ch.33). According to Ofglen "She used a doctor- (215; ch.33). Janine didn't achieve salvation through legitimate means; she took the route that Offred had refused to go down. Offred, on hearing this information, says to herself: "I feel an illness, in the pit of my stomach. Not an illness, an emptiness" (214; ch.33). Offred feels this emptiness because she herself has lost identity and potential meaning. Her phantom baby, her phantom salvation, dies with Janine's failure. Janine then takes blame upon herself, and begins to think her baby died because she was "being sinful" (215; ch.33). Offred says, "It's like Janine, though, to take it upon herself, to decide the baby's flaws were due to her alone. But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot" (215; ch.33). .
In turn, Janine is forced to find her salvation another way. She searches desperately for a scapegoat. Her quest for salvation ends by embracing the new system, by participating with joy in the Salvagings. A person will do anything rather than admit their life has no meaning. Janine commits murder. The government lets her and the other Handmaids loose on a man they say is a rapist, but in reality he is a political prisoner.
