Most stories tend to be written in one of two points of view: first person and third person. (While there is also a second person point of view, that one tends to be far more obscure, and would not apply to this particular story in any case.) First person point of view refers to a story in which the narrator is a character within the story itself. Third person, on the other hand, refers to a perspective by which the narrator exists outside of the story, and is relating events without directly participating in them.
Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" is a story told from third-person point of view (and more specifically, as others have already pointed out, third person omniscient rather than third person limited).
Interestingly, point of view is one of those foundational elements which shapes a story and thus can be found everywhere within that story (including, in this case, in the story's very structure). Note, for example, that while the story centers around the house, it is not told directly from the house's perspective. Instead, Bradbury describes the house as it continues according to its already established routine.
One of the most notable passages, however, emerges late in the story when the fire breaks out. Here we see the versatility of third person omniscient, as Bradbury is able to change his perspective, switching between the fire and the house. Consider the following passage, where the narration now follows the fire rather than the house:
The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.
Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colors of drapes! (Bradbury, "There Will Come Soft Rains")
You cannot do these kinds of shifts in perspective with conventional first person narration (and it can also be very tricky in third person limited, where the narration tends to follow the viewpoint of a particular character—even if the narrator is not identical to that character as it would be in first person). This kind of technique immediately suggests, by its very presence, third person omniscient (where the narrator resides entirely outside the story, and can thus freely discuss the experiences and perspectives of any of the characters within it).
The point-of-view is third person omniscient. There are two choices in this story for point of view: third person omniscient or the perspective of the house, for the only "character" in the story is the house. However, we can't be getting the point of view of the house for two reasons. First, the narrative takes us all over the place, inside and outside, and continues the narrative after the house has died.
Second, the narrative voice comments on the house as if watching it from afar and passing judgement. The narrator says:
Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.
The omniscient narrator is used effectively in this story. He doesn't tell us everything, but he is able to reveal to us all we need to know to construct an understanding of what has happened.
The narrative point of view of this story is third person. More specifically, the narration is also third person omniscient. This means that the narrator is not a character within the story, and it means that the narrator acts as an outside, impartial observer. This point of view works well for this story because there are a lot of moving pieces to the house. While the house isn't a human being, that doesn't mean it isn't a character. The third person narrator is able to tell readers about what the house is thinking and doing, and we get information on what the house's "tools" are doing. We get information about the kitchen and its frantic pace as well as info about the cleaner mice swiftly moving through the house. We also get to view the dog and what happens to it. The outside, passionless observer works great for this story because a main point of the story is that nature simply doesn't care about mankind and its wars. Whether humans exist or not doesn't matter to the rest of the natural world. It's neutral to our existence, and a third person omniscient narrator is often an equally neutral entity.
Ray Bradbury's 1950 story "There Will Come Soft Rains" features a third-person omniscient point of view. This means that the narrator observes and describes action but does not participate in it and has the ability to understand and communicate the thoughts and feelings of the characters. The narrator's tone is dispassionate as the automated house continues to go about its programmed tasks in the absence of the family it served prior to the nuclear devastation that has claimed their lives.
Though there are no humans in the story, the narrator describes the emotions of the robot mice who emerge to clean up after the family's dying dog tracks mud into the house: "Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience".
The house itself is anthropomorphized, "its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air", as it is consumed by fire at the story's conclusion.
Bradbury, Ray. "The Will Come Soft Rains" Doubleday, 1950.
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