Question

Richie had felt a mad, exhilarating kind of energy growing in the room. . . . He thought he recognized the feeling from his childhood, when he felt it every day and had come to take it merely as a matter of course. He supposed that, if he had ever thought about that deep-running aquifer of energy as a kid (he could not recall that he ever had), he would have simply dismissed it as a fact of life, something that would always be there, like the color of his eyes . . . . Well, that hadn't turned out to be true. The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself—that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller . . . purpose, maybe, or goals . . . .
Which word describes the tone in this excerpt best?

optimistic
nostalgic
ironic
romantic

Answer 1

I think the answer is nostalgic. Based from the excerpt, Richie missed the old time when he was younger. He felt melancholy as he tried to describe himself from his younger years. Rich felt that he had changed a lot since then. He felt that he is more energetic when he was younger compared to his present self.