しか before a clause

Question

誰もが平等に死んで、自分では誰一人救えなかった。 人間なんてそんなものだと諦めるしか、目の前の恐怖を抑えられなかった。

My TL:
Everyone died equally, I could not save anyone.
I could do nothing other than giving up thinking "Human beings are like that."
I could not suppress the fear in front of me.

How does しか work in this sentence?
I think I understand the general meaning of the sentence but I am lost grammatically.

Answer 1

I would say this sentence is a bit awkward. This sentence is a lot easier to understand if it's written like this:

人間なんてそんなものだと諦めることでしか、目の前の恐怖を抑えられなかった。
It was only by giving up, thinking "That's how human beings are", that I could suppress the fear in front of me.

Compare with these simpler sentences:

• 練習することで強くなれる。 By practicing, I can become stronger.
• 練習することでしか強くなれない。 Only by practicing can I become stronger.
• 練習するしか強くなれない。 (the same as above, but looks a bit weird to me)

Answer 2

しか is a postpositional particle and it is always used with ない which means "negative". And it means "just have to" , "have no choice but", and "have nothing but" etc.

For example. 彼は英語しか話せない(He can only speak English.), この図書館には日本語の本しかない(This library has nothing but books written in Japanese.)

I think 人間なんてそんなものだと諦めるしか、目の前の恐怖を抑えられなかった means that I could do nothing other than giving up by thinking "Human beings are like that." in order to suppress the fear in front of me.

Answer 3

This is an interesting question, since when I read the sentence leading up to "しか", I expected a "なかった" or "できなかった" to follow. So I think the form "[verb]しか" here implies that a negation should follow.

The object of the verb "抑えられなかった", however, of course is "目の前の恐怖", and "諦めるしか抑えられなかった" does not really make sense. So I would have to bet that this is a stylistic way of saying:

諦めるしか、目の前の恐怖を抑える方法がなかった

_{^{I must admit, I was a bit confused about the meaning until @choco's formulation in comments}}