Grammatical/syntactical implication of なお

Question

I've encountered the below sentence, and although I kind of understand where it's going, I find it hard to comprehend, especially how it ends.

その弱い人間が切り刻まれようが突きされようがそれでもなお生き続けるってことがどんなことなのか。。。

So he says that "These weak people, even if they are like cut and pierced and stabbed etc., even more it seems they keep on living"? And the ってことがどんなことなのか evades me. Maybe there is some interaction with なお which is a peculiar particle by itself. If I had to guess, I would interpret the last part as "what a thing that is? To keep on living with all the above things happening". But it seems really hit or miss and I believe I might be missing something.

Answer 1

First things first, there seems to be a typo in your quoted text. I googled and found a source with the correct version:

貴様の言うとおり人間は弱いよ。すぐ死ぬ。その弱い人間が切り刻まれようが突き刺されようがそれでもなお生き続けるってことがどんなことなのか…貴様も少しは味わってみろよ。(source)

So the part you extracted seems to be a subordinate clause that's connected to the following line.

I can't find a duplicate target specifically on なお to point you to, so I am going to make an attempt at an answer. Surprised this seemingly hasn't been asked before.

なお
an adverb that indicates that an action or state is still going on or the degree of something increases; a conjunction indicating that an additional comment follows what has just been said in the preceding sentence (source: A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar, Seiichi Makino, Michio Tsutsui, Japan Times, 2008)

The meanings that なお effects include: "still", "even more", "all the more", "additional" or "additionally", "and", "furthermore". Here it is used to describe an intensified degree, and this usage often occurs with a verb or an adjective.

Another grammar point that might be worth mentioning—although you didn't ask about it in your question—is ～ようが、～ようが. It's verb volitional form + が／と／とも. These occur either in pairs or alone. This phrase has a pretty big variety of different forms. It can be used with verbs/nouns/形容動詞/形容詞, but since you seem to have gotten the general idea, I won't get into detail on that. The meaning is as you say, "even if", or "doesn't matter if", namely, what's stated after it is true despite all the things being stated in the ようが phrase.

ってこと　＝　ということ

どんなことなのか with a question/unknown marker か and an explanatory or explanation-begging の

For のか please see this answer

The part you are asking about roughly means:

Humans, weak just like you've said, even if mangled, even if stabbed, still go on living regardless. You know what that's like? You should get a taste of that!